The New Age
by realfriends13
Summary: It's kind of hard to do well in college when a zombie apocalypse occurs and overruns campus.
1. Chapter 1

You don't expect to be in your pajamas when your life changes forever.

We were all in our dorm rooms. I had just finished unpacking everything that afternoon, and I was taking advantage of the night's solitude by watching an old movie with some steaming ramen soup; stereotypical college kid stuff. My roommate had gone out to meet up with some of her friends who had been placed in other dorms, and I was already in night clothes since I'd be going to bed soon, and classes started the next day anyway.

Just as I finished settling into a nest of sorts built out of blankets and pillows, my hot soup placed warmly in my hands, I heard screams coming from the hallway. And not dramatic screams or joking around screams either; these were _horrified_.

Opening the door and poking my head out, I wasn't surprised to see at least six other kids doing the exact same thing. There, in the center of the hallway, stood a girl in black running shorts and an old blue T-shirt. She had her dark hair in a bun, tied at the very top of her head. She wore a pink sneaker on one foot, though the other was bare except for the sock. By it was a bag of cosmetics, and I remember hoping to myself that she still had the receipt for that thing because the blood stains had ruined the pretty plaid design on it for good.

Nobody said anything, and I didn't blame them because the body on the floor was enough to shut me up, too. Ripped jeans and a flannel button-up, it was a boy I'd seen my first day back on campus, smoking a cigarette while leaned up against a 'no smoking' sign. The only real difference was that his skin was gray, and he now sported a couple sores oozing some sort of green substance I'd never seen before. His eyes were open, cold and pale yellow, and I couldn't help but feel like they were looking right at me.

The black-haired girl screamed again, loud and shrill, staring at all of us like some sort of caged animal. Her eyes desperately searching us, as if asking " _gee, can you believe it? Get a load of this guy!"_.

Still, no one answered, and no one moved. Overcome with panic, she ran into one of the dorms, slamming the door behind her. I could still hear her screaming even after she'd shut the door.

I broke the stillness by opening a door just enough to allow me to slip out, cautiously making my way towards the boy, minding the small puddle of something that was far too black to be blood. There was a pink sneaker near his forehead where a nasty mustard-colored bruise had formed. She had thrown her shoe at him.

Kneeling down, I was painfully aware of all the eyes of the students peering into the hallway trained on me. Still, I couldn't help it, and reached out to touch one of the smears of green substance on his face. Inches from doing so, I stopped, thinking I should know better and retracting my hand.

It reanimated in an instant. Reaching out, he coiled his thin, cold fingers around my wrist, eliciting a scream from me as shrill and terrified as the black-haired girl's. It only managed a mere whimper of a growl, however, as within seconds a heavy stomp silenced it, indenting its skull with ease. My wrist was released, and I pulled it close, shuffling backward so that my back was to the wall.

"Are you okay?"

I looked up to my savior, taking note of the extent of tattoos creeping up his left arm and disappearing under his black T-shirt, and for a moment I thought he was another one. About to scream once again, my senses took over and I realized his eyes were not yellow but hazel, his skin tanned.

"Yeah," I choked out, accepting the hand I had just realized was outstretched, and standing.

The dorm came to life in that moment.

"What was that?!" One boy called out as he stepped out of his dorm room, buttoning up the jeans he wore and pulling away from a girl wrapped in a bedsheet behind him.

"He put his _foot_ through its _head_!" Someone else commented a bit further down the hall. They sounded on the verge of hysterics.

Tattoo-boy shrugged, eyeing the boy who had stepped out.

"Hell if I know. But there was one in the east dorm, too. Everyone thought it was a zombie at first, but…" he trailed off, obviously skeptical.

" _Zombies_ don't _exist_ ," a blonde girl proclaimed, only half her body visible from behind her door, "don't be _ridiculous_."

Tattoo-boy rolled his eyes, glaring at her. "You think I don't know that?" He demanded, his voice incredulous and cruel. "But, really, do you want to explain to us what that thing is?" He challenged, pointing to the corpse of the boy.

She stared at him for a beat longer before stepping back and slamming her door shut.

One by one, the rest of the students did the same, though a bit more graceful about the force chosen to shut their doors. Within a minute all that remained outside were Tattoo-Boy, the one in jeans, and myself.

And the dead one.

"If there was two, there'll be more," the boy in the jeans observed, looking at Tattoos and ignoring me completely. "Fuck," he added, placing a hand on the back of his neck and glaring down at his feet as if they were supposed to fix the issue at hand.

"I don't plan on finding out," Tattoos replied, and though his deep voice was level I was convinced that he was scared. "Either way, there's a CEDA bus taking off tonight in one hour. I intend to be on it."

Jeans nodded, starting to head back to his dorm before stopping, shooting a cautious look at Tattoos. "Meet back here in thirty?" He asked, clearly unsure and distrusting.

Tattoos considered it for a moment, making a big scene out of rubbing his chin and supposedly considering, before nodding. "Pack your things, both of you. Tell your girl to pack, too. Take what's necessary." He glanced at me, frowning. "Whatever this is, it's only the top of a very large clusterfuck."

I nodded, my eyes still wide and my heart just barely beginning to calm down from the encounter with the dead one. I'd seen enough zombie movies to know what this was. If there was an evacuation occurring, then I sure as shit planned to be on it, too.

The boy in jeans retreated back into his dorm room and shut the door, the faint sounds of conversation blossoming behind it. Tattoos nodded to me.

"Half an hour. I'm going with or without you; any of you."

He set off down the hall after that, undoubtedly to pack, and merely being alone in that hallway with the body on the ground was enough to knock my adrenaline into work. I shot up and entered my room, slamming the door shut and locking it behind me. A bag. I needed a bag.

I reached for my track bag sitting on my desk and dumped it out, a little disappointed to ruin my packing work of all my track clothes despite the unavoidable fact that under these circumstances practice was most likely canceled.

I got to work. Clean jeans, shirts, shorts and tank tops for when it got hot. Sunglasses. Sunscreen. Socks. A couple non-perishable foods. Some bottles of water, the pocket knife my father had given to me for our fishing trips.

Crap, my father.

It'd been weeks since I'd spoken to him. He ran a bar down in Rayford, and if those things were here there had to be some in Georgia. Of course there were. We'd exchanged opinions on the Green Flu outbreak. The last time I spoke to him he said half the usual bar crowd wasn't coming because they'd come down with something, and even the ones that did come seemed sick out of their minds. He still let them in, though. Couldn't afford not to.

I pushed the thought away, deciding that theorizing on my father's fate when I had only half an hour to prepare for evacuation was not a good tactic. Deciding that pajamas did not make a good escape outfit, I changed out of them and into more efficient wear. Combat boots, jean shorts, a tank top, and an army jacket dad had passed onto me for 'good luck'.

Realizing I had 15 minutes to spare, I waited around a little, too nervous to eat the cup of soup cooling on my desk. Though, after some careful consideration, I figured I could use as much energy as possible right now and leaving on an empty stomach wouldn't be a great idea so I downed it, a little sickened.

As I finished the last gulp from the little styrofoam cup, a knock loud and powerful enough to knock my door down made me jump. "With or without you, it's your choice!"

I opened the door to find myself face to face with Tattoos. "Glad you decided to live," he said, and I noticed Jeans behind him with a blonde girl I didn't recognize. She must've been the one in the bed sheet, though now she sported jeans and a cardigan.

Nodding, I grabbed my duffel bag and stepped out into the hallway, nodding at Jeans and the girl. Tattoos took no such courtesies. He began a rapid stride down the hallway, and the rest of us had to jog a little to catch up.

We were silent as we walked, though the dorm was anything but. In the half hour that had passed, panic had spread throughout the building. Word of about the… _thing_ on my floor had passed, and college students rushed around us-on cell phones, carrying bags, trying to find their friends. The four of us seemed almost out of place, jogging (or in Tattoos' case, walking) calmly through the masses, bags in our hands.

Outside of the dorm was the same story, and I couldn't help but shiver as the cool September breeze hit my face. It was dark, and the air was just starting to chill as autumn approached. I took hold of Tattoos' hand, more worried about getting lost in the darkness than the dirty look he shot me.

The CEDA trucks were just starting the engines when we managed to arrive. Climbing into the back of one, an agent pulled the door down, and we were directed to sit by another agent inside carrying what appeared to be a shotgun.

Dozens of college students filled the rest of the truck, some asleep, some awake, most in their pajamas. It seemed that the four of us were among the only ones who'd had the sense to change out of our sleepwear. We claimed the leftmost back corner of the truck, settling down into a small circle, and I bitterly thought we must look like we were in some sort of meeting.

"Nice of you three to decide to give yourselves a fighting chance," Tattoos mumbling, eyeing each of us in the dim glow of the lantern someone had hung in the center of the trailer's ceiling. "My name's Jason. Griffith. Last year of college. I was going to med school after this but… I guess times have changed."

"A doctor?" Jeans scoffed, "I never would have guessed."

Jason snorted at that, rolling his eyes. "And what, I'm guessing you're going to be a _lawyer_?" He challenged.

Jeans stiffened at the comment, clearly offended. "Yes, actually," he sniffed, dark eyes narrowing. "My name's Cameron. This is my girlfriend, Natalie."

Natalie offered a weak wave, a small smile on her face, but she looked away quickly. A melancholy expression took her features and settled on her face.

Then they were silent, which not only confused me but also scared me. Looking back from the lantern and to them, I realized they were still waiting on my introduction.

"Casey," I said quietly, picking on a loose thread on my jacket.

"Alright. I guess we can all agree that what we saw back in the dorms had something to do with this Green Flu bullshit," Jason stated.

We all nodded.

"And in the next couple days, we're gonna see a shitload more of those," he added.

Again, we all nodded.

Jason sighed, leaning against the side of the truck and looking up at the ceiling, muttering something. I took that as a sign to disperse from our small corporate meeting and sat next to him, staring off into that lantern again, studying the faces of the people around us. Young. Tired. Scared.

A few feet away from me, Cameron and Natalie had set up for their night, Cameron utilizing their bags as pillows while Natalie wrapped her arms around him and used his chest as her own pillow. Figuring that if I so much as touched Jason, he'd probably toss me off the truck, I curled up beside him and used my own duffel as a pillow, and closed my eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

After what felt to me like two seconds but was most likely more around two hours later, I awoke to someone shaking me harshly by the shoulder.

"Casey. Wake up."

The hushed whisper startled me—definitely male, and definitely urgent—and it took me a moment to remember where I was and why. Cracking my eyes open, I saw Jason, looking not at me but rather in the direction of the lantern.

Sitting up and rubbing my eyes, I looked into the direction his gaze was focused. When I saw nothing, I turned back to him, confused. And then I heard something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up stick straight.

From the wall closest to the truck's cabin came a faint growl, oddly inhuman but undeniably coming from one of the students. From the distance, however, I couldn't tell which one. All I knew was that it sounded awfully similar to the growl emitted by the thing that had grabbed my wrist in the dorm room.

"Do you think it's…" I trailed off, having my answer the minute Jason looked at me with wide eyes. I glanced to him, back out to the direction in which the growls were coming from, and to the sleeping CEDA agent across from us.

We waited, stationary for around three minutes, before the growling became even louder.

"She's going to turn any minute now, and as soon as she does, she'll be hungry," Jason observed grimly, reaching out for his duffel bag and pulling it to him. I watched dumbly as he reached in and pulled out a hammer. Automatically, I dove my hand into my own duffel bag and produced my pocketknife.

"Glad to see you had the sense to bring a weapon," Jason muttered as one of the lumps within the group of students at the other end of the truck stood, the form of a girl with her hair tied up in a ponytail apparent. From the dim light of the lantern I could just barely make out a Midnight Riders logo on her sweatshirt. She must've been from Georgia, too.

Her growling had gotten loud enough that more and more students were waking up and coming to, fear paralyzing most of them into complete silence and stillness other than an initial gasp.

As if threatened by the sudden awareness of her presence, she let out a scream—a screech, really, as if she'd spent the entirety of the trip gargling nails. It was this that awoke the sleeping CEDA agent, however, and he silenced her with a single shot to the head, and the truck was quiet again after that.

"At ease," he said simply, before promptly falling back asleep, a snore escaping his lips.

The moment after, a wave of hushed whispers hit the truck, but to my surprise there was no outright nor blatant panic. I turned to my small group to find Cameron and Natalie had awoken as well, and were muttering silently amongst themselves.

"Did you see that?" I whispered to Jason, my voice trembling as if to spite me. "He didn't even _try_ to help her."

But Jason didn't seem to hear me. Instead, his hazel eyes were trained on the now lifeless corpse over to the other side of the truck.

He stared at it for a real long moment before he decided to speak. "They weren't letting people with symptoms on the truck."

I stopped, looking straight at him. "What do you mean?"

He stared back at me, eyes serious and exasperated. "There's two possibilities. First one; it's airborne, and we've all just been exposed to it."

I bit my lip nervously at that, embracing the truth within the statement and disliking it. Still, if that was only his first hypothesis of the situation at hand, I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the second one.

"And the second possibility?" I asked, despite my fear.

Rather than answer, he glared at me. "I really hope you're not stupid enough to be asking me that," he snapped.

I looked away from him, back instead at the body of the girl the CEDA agent had shot. What were we supposed to do? Just leave it there for the entire damn trip? If Jason's first thought was right, if it really was airborne, then leaving her there on the truck to bleed and drool out would just put us all at even longer exposure.

"Why didn't he help her?" I insisted, turning back to Jason, speaking up for the first time since my roommate announced she was going to go meet up with some friends what felt like at least a century ago. "I thought CEDA was studying this Green Flu. Wouldn't he at least want to keep her alive so they could _study_ it?"

Jason shrugged, absently tapping on one of the tattoos on his wrist. "I'm still trying to figure that part out," he admitted, not looking at me.

I stopped speaking after that. Instead, I sat beside Jason with my back against the truck's wall, my pocket knife still in hand. Why didn't CEDA _help_ her? She wasn't attacking anyone—not yet, anyway. Why shoot her without even a moment's hesitation? But more importantly, how the _hell_ did she turn two hours in, and what did that mean for the rest of our sorry asses?

I couldn't sleep after that. My eyes remained wide as I stared to the adjacent wall of the truck, my gaze occasionally flipping to Cameron and Natalie whenever one of them so much as murmured in their sleep. Before long I noticed Jason doing the same; his hazel eyes wide and, on some level he refused to acknowledge, terrified.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't long before the truck stopped moving and the ones of us that remained noticed.

Since the first girl who had succumbed to the Green Flu, two more had. The CEDA agent had behaved no differently than he had the first occasion; he shot them, clear as day, and reminded us all to remain at ease as if that were even possible anymore.

"Why are we stopping?" Jason demanded, eyes snapping to the CEDA agent who'd just woken up and was now standing, stretching himself out with his rifle by his side.

"I suppose we need gas, kid," he answered, half paying attention as if Jason were no more than a foolish preschooler, "we've been driving for six hours."

"Six _hours_?!" Cameron exclaimed, Natalie looking tired and scared beside him.

"Where are we even going?" Some guy wearing a baseball cap called from the opposite end of the truck.

The agent glared at Jason as if it were his fault that everyone suddenly had begun to ask questions. "We're going to Georgia. There's a safe zone set up there."

A safe zone? From the Green Flu? Was it _that_ out of control?

"Why didn't you set up a safe zone in New York?" Jason asked, his voice relaxed and cool as ever. He spoke with authority to the agent as if he were in charge instead, rather than the other way around.

The agent stared back at him, eyes wide and incredulous. "You think we can set up a _safe zone_? In New York fucking _City_?" He stopped for a moment, looking around the truck as if searching for someone to agree with him. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

He shook his head, as if overwhelmed by the supposed stupidity of Jason's inquiry. "Hell, the city's probably overrun by this point. It's a miracle we even got into the _university_. Haven't any of you been watching the news?"

No one was able to ask any further questions following that, as there was a knock on the door to the truck and rather than entertain any further curiosity, the agent went over and pulled the door open. Outside, another agent awaited.

"We're taking a twenty-minute pit stop to fill up the tank and give you all bathroom breaks. Everyone's expected to stay _within the area_ ," the agent commanded, his voice deep and tough. He looked angry, and with the graying beard and furrowed eyebrows he looked like he belonged in the military.

"Take an agent with you if you plan on entering the gas station. There are bathrooms, but we don't know if they're flushing," he continued, eyes flickering to all of us in the truck.

He and the other agent set up a wooden plank to serve as a ramp and allowed us to climb out. The warmth of the sun felt a little too foreign for my comfort, I realized, as I squinted and stretched in the morning sun.

"What do they mean by 'overrun'?" Cameron asked, marching his way to where Jason and I stood, Natalie in tow behind him. He stared at us, serious, as if he believed that we somehow held the answer.

Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, I don't know," he said, voice bored, "maybe we're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse."

With the expression on Cameron's face, you would've thought that Jason had just reached out and slapped him across the face. He exchanged a terrified look with Natalie.

"Do you seriously think that that's what this might be?" I mumbled, shifting my weight from one hip to the other nervously. "A zombie apocalypse? Straight out of _Dawn of the Dead_?"

"I'll let you know," Jason replied, turning and stalking off.

As if tied to him like puppets, Cameron, Natalie and I all trailed after him.

"Where are you going?!" Cameron whispered, his voice as demanding and tight as ever.

Jason shot him a dirty look before distributing it to both Natalie and myself as well, clearly irritated that the three of us were tagging along. "I gotta take a leak, shit, do you all wanna come watch?"

"They said we have to bring an agent with us if we want to go to the bathroom," Natalie pointed out quietly. This was the first time I'd heard her speak—she had a nice voice. Soft, gentle. It was a wonder that she had managed to be with someone as high strung as Cameron.

"I have a hammer," Jason replied simply before nodding to me, "she has a knife. And I take it she's handy with it because it looks worn."

A little caught off guard, I nodded. I'd been using that knife on fishing trips since dad had shown me how. A pang of worry and fear shot through me at the thought, so I pushed it away before it could cause any more trouble.

"Then I should be fine," Jason concluded nonchalantly.

The gas station bathroom was a short walk from the truck, though under the current circumstances it felt miles away. Jason crept in, eyeing Natalie for a moment before deciding Cameron was the better bet to yield a weapon, and handed it to him before he disappeared behind the door. The rest of us took the time to explore the station.

The first thing I noticed was that the windows to the snack stop in the station had been shattered. Upon further inspection, I realized the place had been utterly ransacked. Homeless? Animals? Still, neither of those candidates seemed likely to leave such striking bloodstains behind, or kill the store clerk and leave his body slumped behind the counter.

I kneeled down by the window closest to the counter, minding my distance from this Flu that had already begun to terrify me.

"There's a bite mark," I observed dumbly, starting to feel a little dizzy from being so close to a corpse.

Cameron made his way over and kneeled beside me, eyeing the man's neck. Indeed, there was a clear—albeit messy—bite mark on the right side of his neck, right over his collarbone. Deep, too; so deep, in fact, that we could see said bone.

We exchanged a look and he glanced back to Natalie, concern written all over his face.

"If this really is zombies, and he's bitten, why isn't he walking around looking for something to eat?" I muttered, confused. It didn't make any damn sense. Every single zombie movie I'd ever seen, every damn book I'd ever read; you get bitten, you turn. That was just the rule.

"This might have something to do with it," Jason answered, suddenly standing over us. His tattoo-covered arm was outstretched, pointing to a small, circular wound in the center of the man's forehead, one we hadn't noticed. "Someone shot him. Whoever raided this place is my guess. Probably found the poor fuck still stuck in his goddamn gas station snack shop."

"We should go back," Natalie said suddenly, surprising all of us. "The trucks might be leaving soon," she explained, looking away from our simultaneous looks.

I glanced at Jason and he shrugged, nodding. He took his hammer back from Cameron and began leading the three of us back to the truck. We did not look back to the gas station.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted with the putrid and ever so uninviting scent of burning flesh. There, to the side of the road, stood five CEDA agents surrounding a small mound of what appeared to be bodies. The ones that had turned during the truck ride.

"You're _burning_ them?!"

I couldn't help it. It just slipped out.

One of the agents, the bearded one who had set up the ramp earlier, turned and gave us all a stern glare the moment he saw us.

"Where have you all been?!" He shouted, disregarding my question. "We told you to take an agent with you!"

He scowled at all of us, beady eyes trained on us with an intense hatred. "You could've gotten killed, or attracted more of them!" He barked.

"You can't just fucking burn them on the side of the road!" Cameron countered, ignoring the agent's scolding.

The man stood tall, arms crossed over his thick chest. "We don't want this spreading any more than it already has, kid."

A sarcastic, aggravated scoff came from Jason when he said that. "You don't want to spread it? Oh, yeah? So that's why you just let a truck full of college kids hang around with the bodies on the floor for three hours, right?"

The agent's eyes narrowed, and a simple glance at one of the other ones had them ushering us back into the truck, more stupid lectures about how dangerous it was to have wandered off without a CEDA agent ringing in our ears.


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody else on the truck knew a thing about the body burning. When we tried asking about it, the agent keeping guard made us keep quiet, his reasoning being that he 'didn't want to cause a panic'. I thought Jason might give him grief over it, and insist on discussing it, but the agent was young and Jason took mercy on him.

It was probably his first time interacting with the Flu directly, anyway.

Jason gave in easy, and we retired back to the same corner we had been sitting in before. The CEDA agents had passed out some food—nothing special, just non-perishables like beef jerky, canned foods, bags of chips.

According to them, we were a little bit more than halfway to Georgia. It seemed like a bit of a short trip to me, considering we were driving from New York, but then again we were accounting for no traffic, no stoplights, or even a speed limit. It was almost as if the world had simply shut off. I couldn't understand how our university had remained so ignorant to all of this for so long.

"Any of you good with a gun?" Jason asked suddenly, taking a bite out of a piece of jerky he was holding in his hand, his mouth full.

None of us spoke, and he eyed us each before laughing. "I didn't think so," he chuckled, more to himself than to us, and swallowed his food.

Feeling defensive, I suddenly spoke up. "I can shoot a rifle," I declared, eyes flashing from each of them, "my dad used to take me out with him, sometimes. We'd practice shooting. He never wanted to kill anything, though. Said it's not what it was about. We shot bottles, targets. I hit my first bullseye when I was ten."

Jason, Cameron, and Natalie all stared at me, the shock in their eyes apparent. Self-conscious, I backed off.

"Your old man," Cameron began, his voice even, "is he…?"

I sighed a little, looking away. "I don't think so. The last time I talked to him was two weeks ago, and he's been surrounding by people with the Flu the whole time."

"Sorry I asked," Cameron mumbled, and I shook my head, dismissing it, and it was quiet again.

After a minute or so of silence, Jason saw it right to continue the conversation. "I can shoot a pistol," he admitted, furrowing his eyebrows and studying us, "so I guess we'll be alright, for the most part."

"What good does being able to _shoot_ do?" Cameron asked, glaring at Jason. "We don't even _have_ guns. We don't _need_ guns. We're going to a _safe zone_."

Jason sighed, rolling his eyes as if he were being forced to deal with a particularly stupid child. "Do you really think we're just going to make it to this safe zone and everything will be peachy-keen, and you can just keep pretending that you're studying to be a _lawyer_?" He asked, sarcasm dripping off his voice like toxic waste.

"I don't know if you realize," he continued, even more venom in his voice, "but we're in the middle of a zombie _fucking_ apocalypse, even if none of you idiots want to accept it for some godforsaken reason. We might not even _make it_ to this supposed 'safe zone'."

He was vicious at this point, nothing holding him back from telling Cameron exactly what he thought. "Kid," he said, "from the second that girl screamed in that hallway, you stopped being safe."

He took a moment to study each of us, shaking his head. "We all did."

Cameron stared back at Jason, his mouth agape though he said nothing. I think the truth in Jason's words had slammed into him just like they had into me. He was right. We weren't safe, and the sooner we let go of that pathetic illusion, the better. We weren't going to be safe for a while.

As if upset by the truth in his own words, Jason bit his lip and leaned back against the truck's wall, glaring at the half empty bag of jerky in his life.

Letting out a shaky breath, Cameron leaned back as well towards the truck's door until his back hit it with a dull thud. He stared at the truck floor, eyes sad. As if sensing his pain, Natalie leaned into his side, her fingers curling around his hand.

It made me mad.

"We're not gonna get _anywhere_ moping around," I growled, the irritation pulsing inside me. "I mean, yeah, we're not safe, and chances are we're all going to be dead before the week's even up. But that doesn't mean we should just throw in the towel the first time things get hard."

I cringed a little, realizing I'd just used one of the phrases my dad always did, but it seemed to work. The three of them looked up, studying me, and I could tell I was getting through.

"I think Casey's right," Natalie said, perking up and glancing at Cameron and Jason, "we can't just give up and wait around until we die."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Alright, alright, I don't need any more of this inspirational speech you two planned out or whatever," he growled, but there was a small hint of a smile on his face. "You're right. First chance we get, we're grabbing guns."

The rest of us nodded, a new sense of power in us, and we began setting up to sleep again.

* * *

I woke up after a couple of restful hours, feeling less exhausted than I had the first time I'd awoken on the truck. The other three were still asleep, I noticed, even Jason. Natalie and Cameron were curled up in their usual way. Jason, meanwhile, lay with his head on his arm. I looked out to the lantern, noticing it was dimming.

My stomach dropped the minute I heard a growl. Eyes snapping immediately to the group of college students across us, I realized that none of them seemed to be moving too much—or at all, really. There was another growl; slightly louder this time. My gaze shifted immediately to the CEDA agent.

" _Jason_ ," I squeaked automatically, watching as the agent's body shifted awkwardly as if being pulled by some invisible thread. He began convulsing, more growls emitting from him. Loud enough to wake up some of the other students.

"Hm?" Jason whimpered, sitting up slowly, rubbing at his eyes. He tore his hands away when he heard yet another growl, and he too looked to the agent. " _Fuck_ ," he murmured, reaching out and shaking Cameron.

Cameron woke up with a start, and I could tell he was about to start screaming at Jason, but the acknowledgment of the agent turning was enough to get him to shut up.

"He's the only one in here with a gun," I mumbled quietly, as the agent began to stand, staggering with every step he took, every movement he made.

From the other side of the truck, someone screamed, and even in the dimming glow of the lantern I could see another form standing, the same strange, broken pose as the agent. It was enough to distract the two newly turned zombies, and the one standing closest to the source silenced them with a single slash.

Jason knocked into overdrive at that moment. He stood, bolting towards the agent, his hammer suddenly in hand. A single swing at the agent knocked him down, and Jason immediately reached for the gun beside him.

Shooting up, I ran to him and kneeled down to the agent's level, swiping the pocketknife from the back pocket of my shorts and burying it into the agent's forehead. Without hesitation, I yanked it out and threw it to the zombie across us, some miracle allowing the blade to nestle itself into its eye. The zombie fell to the ground.

We looked at each other, crazed and hysterical smiles on our faces, and for a moment, I thought to myself that we must look like maniacs. I couldn't believe we'd managed to take down both zombies so quickly and efficiently, and even gain a rifle in the process.

Still jittery from the adrenaline coursing through me, I stood and made my way to the further zombie, snatching my knife back and ignoring the terrified looks of the students around me. I strolled back to Jason, and we were halfway back to Cameron and Natalie when the impact threw us into the opposite side of the truck.

My head was pounding. The second I opened my eyes, I saw Jason holding his own, a trickle of blood running in between his fingers and down his forehead.

"Are you okay?" He groaned, the pain he was feeling evident. Minding the movement, I nodded, reaching for his hand.

We stood, looking around for the others. Cameron and Natalie had managed to huddle together and spare themselves from any harsh head wounds. The students on the other side of the truck were fine as well; the abundance of them had kept them from lurching around and getting slammed like Jason and I had.

"We _crashed_ ," Jason observed, his voice furious, "we fucking _crashed_ on a deserted road in a _zombie apocalypse_." He turned, his fist colliding with the side of the truck and creating a small dent.

"They better have a _damn_ good explanation," he growled, making his way to the door of the truck and tearing it open.

He jumped out and, unable to think of anything better to do, I climbed out after him. He made his way towards the cabin of the truck, stomping, his fists curled.

"What the _fuck_ happened?!" He shouted as he tore the door to the cabin open, and froze.

I ran behind him, standing on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder and see what had made him freeze. It was one of those fancy truck cabins that had both a front and back seat, where four CEDA agents had clearly quit being human and turned into zombies.

I screamed, and it was sufficient to gain their attention. In the exact same moment, all four heads turned to stare emptily at me. Their eyes were cold and pale yellow.

The one closest to the door shot forward, its mouth wide open, teeth baring over the graying beard I could barely associate with any sort of solid memory at this point. It was pure luck that Jason's instincts and reflexes were so refined, and he slammed the door shut just as the zombie's mouth was just barely leaning out of the truck. Its face smashed up to the glass uselessly.

"We need to get out of here," Jason whispered, seizing my wrist and dragging me behind him.

"Where are you guys going?!" Cameron called out from the truck, Natalie standing behind him. The rest of the students stared off at us, eyes wide and full of fear.

Jason looked back, the terror in his eyes now clearly visible. "They've _turned_ ," he shouted back, "the agents are all _turned_ now. We're getting out of here."

"Jason, what about the gun?" I mumbled, and he stopped. He darted off in the direction of the truck and disappeared into its darkness for a moment, and after a second or so he emerged carrying two bags and the rifle of the agent.

Cameron and Natalie trailed behind him, having decided to come as well. They carried their own bags, struggling to keep up with Jason's rapid pace.

Our decision to depart seemed to spark confidence in the other passengers of the truck, and one by one they began climbing out and continuing down the road. Most of them paid no mind to the turned agents in the cabin, instead staring straight forward.

"There's a hotel around here," Jason stated, nodding towards a building that didn't seem to be far from us, "we'll hang out there until we can figure out what the fuck to do."

No one thought of anything better, or felt like arguing with Jason, so we trailed behind him as if we were too dazed to make any sort of decisions for ourselves. Jason didn't seem to mind, though. If anything, I think he liked it better that way. He continued his stride towards the hotel; it was our last hope.

It appeared to be deserted. That much was obvious as we made our way into the first floor, and the silence of everything spooked me plenty. From the looks of it, we were in the recreational room. I'd never seen one of these places so empty.

Jason threw the stuff he carried down and, seeing this as some sort of signal, the three of us did as well.

"We need to clear the area," he said, his voice oddly calm. "If we hang around in one spot, something might sneak up on us." He sounded too relaxed. I thought he might be on the verge of hysterics.

We nodded and followed him out the door and into the hallway.

To say it was a mess would have been an understatement. Splashes of blood painted the walls. The carpet was ripped up and stained with a green substance familiar to the one I had seen coming from the boy in the hallway. Furniture was stacked up in different spots against room doors and entrances to hallways.

As we walked down, a faint growl came from one of the rooms. I made a mental note to not open any doors.

We continued walking until we found a staircase that seemed to be clear, save for a small bottle dropped near the entrance with a rag sticking out of it.

"Molotov," Cameron observed, picking it up and glancing at all of us, "this could come in handy."

Before Jason or any of us could protest, he took a bold step into the staircase and climbed up the first flight before stopping abruptly.

"R-R…" he whimpered, his eyes as wide as plates. " _Run!_ " He squealed, bolting down the steps and past us, grabbing Natalie by the hand and dragging her along behind him. Jason and I could do nothing but stare after them just as the ground began to shake.

It was as if everything were happening in slow motion. From the staircase emerged what to me, at first,appeared to be a colossal mound of pink flesh. Instinct acting before logic, Jason and I darted off them just as the thing launched one giant fist after us, missing us just barely. I felt the back of my jacket flutter as the thing's skin made contact.

We saw Cameron and Natalie dash into the rec room, Cameron standing at the door whilst holding it, motioning for us to hurry up. Jason and I managed to slide into the room, and Cameron slammed the door closed.

" _What is that thing?!_ " Natalie screeched, her blue eyes wide. They searched each of us frantically. She looked like a cornered animal.

"We need to kill it," Cameron decided, staring dead at Jason, who was shaking his head. The ground continued shaking.

"Fuck that," Jason replied, "we need to get the hell _out_ of here. We have no business killing that thing."

By the sound of it, the thing did not care what our decision was as it continued thumping down the hallway, getting closer and closer to the room we waited in. This alone seemed to convince Cameron, who shot out the door and, by the sound of it, threw his Molotov at the super-zombie.

It seemed as though being lit by fire did nothing to stop it, and Cameron was launched backward by one of its heavy fists.

" _Cameron!_ " Natalie howled, and before Jason or I could stop her, she shot out the door and ran after Cameron and the zombie.

"Natalie, _don't_ —!" Jason called after her, slamming his hand against the wall when she ignored him and ran out anyway. Acting purely on autopilot, he pulled the rifle off of his back and turned to me, his face serious and scared.

"Don't you _dare_ leave this room, Casey!" He screamed in my face before disappearing out the door.

The molotov Cameron had thrown had managed to set the carpet on fire. I knew this much the moment the flames began licking at the door to the room, the smell of smoke starting to leak in through the crack between the door and the floor.

I moved away from it, the flames and emptiness of the wide room making me nervous, but it was in vain. The door burst open to a dark green form, wearing coveralls that had since burst in order to accommodate for the zombie's gigantic, deformed arm.

It let out a… a _howl_ , and reached its arm out, and within a millisecond, I was caught and dragged to the other side of the room.


	5. Chapter 5

_"Hey, wait up y'all, there's somebody down here!"_

 _"Ellis, be careful! You don't know what that thing is, it might be a zombie!"_

Footsteps. By the sound of it, approaching me. Right after, someone breathing heavily in front of me, probably out of breath or smothered by the smoke.

Smoke. Fire?

 _"No, it's alright y'all! She's alive!"_

Somebody grabbed my wrist, a little harsh. Maybe feeling for a pulse. Probably, if my state of life was being questioned.

 _"Shoot, we gotta get you outta here!"_

A little quieter this time. Maybe he was talking to me.

 _"Make it fast, Ellis! We got a tank on this floor!"_

I opened my eyes a little bit. Too bright. Too hot. It felt like I was in an oven.

I tried to protest when two muscular arms reached underneath me—one under my knees and one under my back—but it was useless. My throat was too dry to form any coherent words save for something that sounded like the whine of a kicked dog.

Maybe it was the smoke guiding my thought, but shit, I couldn't think about anything other than how much I liked dogs.

"Shh, it's alright sweetheart, you'll be safe soon."

The voice, definitely male, sounded comforting enough. I turned my head into the man's chest, comforted by the firmness of his muscles and the softness of his cotton shirt. I bounced in his arms with each heavy footstep he took, but his grip seemed strong enough. Besides, I was barely conscious of what was even happening.

"Safe room up ahead!" A female voice shouted, and the footsteps' speed increased. A heavy door shut and a metal lock clicked, and suddenly I was placed on a table of sorts, leaned up against a wall.

Somebody took hold of my hand, running their calloused fingers gently over my palm. "Come on darlin', wake up now, easy does it…"

That seemed like good advice right about now, especially since it wasn't all that hot anymore and things didn't feel very on edge. Slowly, I opened my eyes and came face to face with a man wearing a cap, his tanned face stained with dirt and splashes of something black. His lips curled up into a kind smile when I did.

"Can you tell me your name?" He asked, and I noticed he had a thick Southern drawl, a little like my neighbors in Rayford.

Still, my throat wasn't quite cooperating in the presence of this very cute man. "W-... _Water_ ," I managed to choke out, just the mere effort hurting my throat. I watched as the man stood, the sleeves of the work suit he wore tied around his hips waving a little from the movement, and looked around frantically before producing a bottle of water. He uncapped it and held it out to me, and I eagerly accepted and gulped down as much water as I could.

The bottle shriveled as I drained it, and I tossed it onto the rest of the table to my right, leaning my head back onto the wall I'd been propped up against. Simple examination and deduction led me to believe we were in the main office of the hotel. Right by the door where I could still hear faint gurgling, two men were stacking filing cabinets and such. One was midsized, wearing a real expensive-looking white suit, the other larger and dressed more like my dad used to.

Beside the man in the cap, who was now sitting cross-legged in front of me on the floor, was a dark-skinned woman. She wore a pink T-shirt that read 'Depeche Mode', a band my daddy liked. There was a cut on her cheek, but she didn't even seem to notice it. Instead, her gaze was fixed on me.

"Can you tell me your name, darlin'?" The man in the cap repeated, his green eyes focused on my own.

"Casey," I replied simply, staring back at him. "You saved me," I added quickly, studying him.

He chuckled a little at that, scratching at the back of his neck as if he were embarrassed. "I guess I sure did," he mumbled, looking up at me with a little grin.

"Are you hurt, Casey?" The woman asked, giving me a concerned look. Her eyes trailed down to my left leg, and my gaze followed hers before stopping at a burn I hadn't noticed. As if the awareness of it activated the pain, I could suddenly feel it burning.

Nodding leisurely, I pulled my leg up onto the table and closer to myself, examining it. "I think I got a little bit burned," I confessed, letting out a small sigh.

The one who'd saved me stood immediately, fumbling around for something. He relaxed a little when the larger of the other two men handed him a small, red pack, before making his way back to me and offering a nervous smile.

"Let's get you patched up, yeah?" He offered, and I stretched my leg out to him, watching as his shaking hands spread out some sort of burn cream on the inflicted area.

"Ow," I mumbled plainly when he made contact and his eyes snapped back to mine, a slight dash of fear in his eyes.

"Sorry darlin'," he apologized and continued with a little more grace. I held any complaints as he wrapped a white bandage around my leg carefully, minding the burn.

In the meantime, the two men by the obstructed door seemed to have finished, and the one in the fancy suit approached another door by the desk that I hadn't noticed. He looked through the barred window on it, frowning.

"There's a couple of them out there, and it's getting dark. Given our circumstances," he said, eyeing me with distaste, "I don't think it's exactly a great idea to keep going in the night."

The larger one nodded, walking around and peering behind the desk. "There's a couple sleeping bags here," he announced, his voice deep and strong, "I guess we can make do in here for just one night."

He motioned to the suit, and together they picked up a bookcase and set it up against the door with the window, leaving only a small sliver unblocked. It managed to effectively darken the office, and I looked around, eyes wide.

They came and sat down on the desk, inspecting me. With the help of the man in the cap, I stood, and he dragged over a couple chairs for me, the woman, and himself to sit down in.

"You didn't get bit, did you?" The suit asked, glaring at me with narrow eyes. He reminded me of Jason, I thought grimly, as I shook my head.

"My name's Ellis," the man in the cap interrupted, smiling at me and scooting his chair up to the one I was sitting in.

I smiled back at him, settling a little and letting myself really look at him. Earthy, green eyes, and soft-looking tufts of chocolate brown hair, with just a tiny little bit of stubble on his sun-tanned jaw. Maybe I was trapped in a room with four strangers, zombies on either exit in the middle of a zombie apocalypse but _damn_ , he sure was cute.

"Thank you for saving me, Ellis," I murmured, reaching out and touching his hand.

The woman beside me cleared her throat a little, a tiny smile on her face. "My name's Rochelle," she introduced. I turned to her and nodded, reciprocating the smile on her face. She seemed nice enough.

"Nick," the man in the suit said, looking off to the side a little bored. Still, he returned the nod I shot at him.

"I'm Coach," the larger man added, offering a polite—if not awkward—smile.

It was quiet after that; everyone seemed to be calming down from whatever they had faced outside the office. I didn't protest, though; I wasn't feeling much like talking myself, either. What possibly could've become of Jason? Cameron? Natalie? Were they alright?

"I can't _believe_ I'm stranded in Savannah," Rochelle whispered finally, shattering the silence and placing her head in her hands.

Ellis stared back at her, a wide grin on his face. "Man, Savannah's awesome!" He said. "I'll show you the sights on the way to the mall," he promised each of us, smiling at the four of us one by one. So that's where I was. Savannah. Still a pissload far from Rayford, but I guess the truck had made it to Georgia.

"Okay, I guess," Rochelle smiled, a touch of pleasantness in her voice though she still looked a bit bummed out to me. "Please god, don't you let me die in Georgia," she mumbled under her breath.

"There's an evacuation here," I said suddenly, my eyes flickering to each of the others, "a bunch of CEDA agents were driving me and a bunch others from my university to it."

They stared at me, sympathetic looks on their faces, though I couldn't understand why. Wouldn't they be excited to hear about an evacuation?

"They left," Coach said quietly, his voice gentle, "maybe forty-five minutes ago. We missed them."

I stared back at him, waiting for somebody to laugh and say it was a joke and start leading the way to this evacuation. Instead, they all just stared at me, sad looks on their faces.

"Georgia's not so bad," I sighed quietly, still minding the slight soreness in my throat and trying to swallow the lump of grief that had risen upon learning that there was no evacuation anymore, "I'm from Rayford."

Ellis visibly perked up at that, a wide smile on his face. "You don't say!" He exclaimed, excitement in his voice. "Me and my buddy Keith drove up there this one time, on account of the Midnight Riders playin' live at a bar, man, it was one of the best road trips we'd ever done. Say, speakin' of Keith, y'know we were on that roof earlier? This one time, he tried campin' out on top of a buildin' once. He was shootin' crows, but the police were too busy teargassin' him to ask what he was doin' up there."

He stopped, catching his breath, the same wild and excited grin he'd been sporting for a while now on his face. "He screamed for an entire _year_ every single time he opened his eyes. Oh man, at first, it was funny; then it just got sad, but then it got funny again." He chuckled, wiping a tear that had come to his eye from laughing. "Oh _man_."

The other three exchanged confused looks, but I kept staring at him. Something about that dumb grin he had, the way his eyes crinkled up at the ends when he laughed or smiled. I couldn't help but laugh right along with him. It startled him a little bit at first, but then he broke out into the same smile he'd had before.

"Okay, well, moving on from that," Nick muttered, raising his eyebrows and rolling his eyes a little bit, "there are four sleeping bags here. That should be fine, as long as someone's keeping watch at all times."

"I can take first watch," I piped up, looking up at them, "I slept plenty on the truck on the way here. Y'all look like you could use a couple hours of rest more than I could."

They exchanged looks before nodding, and Coach began passing out sleeping bags. Meanwhile, I dragged my armchair over to the door with the bookcase in front and took a look at the firearms set up on the table I'd first been sitting on.

I didn't recognize almost any of the weapons laid out before me, save for a shotgun that looked awfully similar to the one my daddy kept underneath the counter at the bar in case of a burglar or something of the sort. Picking it up carefully, I was pleased that it didn't feel as foreign as I'd expected it to.

Sitting down on the armchair, I pulled my knees up to my chest, minding the burn, and rested the shotgun on my knees. I pointed it through the small space that Nick and Coach had left between the edge of the window and the bookshelf, and glanced outside. Not much going on, the ones Nick had mentioned earlier seemed to have wandered off.

Behind the desk, the other four had set up sleeping bags. Rochelle, Nick, and Coach had fallen into deep sleep already, and I was glad I'd offered to take first watch. Even asleep they looked exhausted. Ellis, however, remained awake. He was sitting up, looking around, before his gaze finally settled on me.

He smiled and stood, gathering his sleeping bag up with him until he plopped down on the floor beside my chair.

"I can stay up with you for a bit if you like," he offered, his voice light and sweet, "I reckon it can get real lonely just sittin' there, watchin' for zombies and all…"

I smiled back at him, grateful for the offer. "That'd be nice," I replied. His smile widened and he climbed into his sleeping bag, leaning back against the armchair. He propped his right arm up on it, resting his chin on his arm, looking up at me with his pretty green eyes.

"So you said you were from Rayford?" He asked.

Thinking back to what he's said earlier, I nodded. "My daddy ran a bar down there. Lived there for years till I had to move up to New York for college."

Ellis nodded, visibly mulling over the information. "I've been there a couple times. Real nice place, I always thought."

I smiled a little, nodding, as I peered out through the window again. Clear. "I miss it like hell," I confessed, sighing and putting the shotgun down on the floor, turning to face Ellis dead on. "It just feels like I ought to be home during all of this, y'know? Instead, I was in New York with no idea as to what was happening, gettin' thrown onto a truck and headed to Georgia without so much as an opinion about it."

Ellis reached out and took my hand, nodding slowly. "I can understand that," he agreed. "Everybody in my neighborhood got evacuated. I coulda gone with 'em, I suppose, but I didn't wanna leave my truck behind. 'Course, that thing got torn to shit the minute I faced one of 'em big pink ones…" he trailed off.

Laughing a little, I realized I appreciated his attempts at humor. They were refreshing, nicer than the pessimistic attitudes I hadn't realized I was getting used to encountering. Noticing my laughter, he broke out into a wide smile again.

"Say, are you cold?" He asked suddenly, holding up his sleeping bag, "it's getting pretty cold lately, and I'm usually real warm anyway…"

Before I could so much as open my mouth to refuse or protest, Ellis had stood and draped it over my shoulders. Shifting a little bit, I couldn't help but pull it tighter around my shoulders, sighing contently at the warmth.

Pleased with himself, Ellis sat back down, propping his chin up on his palm. "Y'know, this reminds me, this one time me and my buddy Keith went camping, except we drove all the way up to _Maryland_ in the dead of January. Keith was _real_ excited about it, so he packed all sorts of stuff to go ice fishin' with, and hiking, and so much snow stuff that he forgot about the most important thing; a sleepin' bag."

I giggled quietly, already knowing where this story was headed. Encouraged by this, Ellis' smile widened even more and his speaking pace quickened a little bit, adding in more details he'd forgotten to include as he continued on.

He kept at it the entire watch shift, each story about him and his friends' misadventures funnier than the last. By the time my shift ended he could barely keep his eyes open, and rather than take over for me he had to wake up a very irritated Coach to keep the next one.

Taking the sleeping bag he'd placed on me, I found an empty spot behind the desk and set up, my eyes on Ellis as he set his own up a few feet from me. When he noticed my stare, he smiled, climbing into his bag and settling down. I couldn't help but smile as I closed my eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

It was nearly terrifying to wake up somewhere that wasn't the dark, gloomy truck filled with college students.

By morning, Nick had been graced with watch duty, which also meant he was in charge of awakening all of us. He did so but wasted no time attempting to coax us out of slumber. No, Nick was clearly more about saving time, and instead delivered to each of us a swift kick to the side followed by a dull 'wake up'.

I sat up cautiously, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, squinting in the sunlight that was pouring in from the barred window on the door. Nick had taken the liberty in casting the bookshelf aside to allow access to the door and was standing by it, loading a pistol.

"There's only a few of them outside," he announced, eyeing each of us, "I figured we should grab some pipes or something along the way and take 'em out with that. No point in wasting bullets."

Stretching out his muscular arms, Coach nodded, before standing. "Whoever used this office kept a bat under their desk," he said, "I found it last night."

He reached for said bat, inspecting it before deciding it would make a decent weapon and holding it in one of his large hands. "I live around here. There's a gun store on the way to the mall. What do you say we pay it is a visit?"

"Sounds good to me," Nick responded.

I nodded and reached for my shotgun when a hand appeared in front of my face, outstretched as if intending for me to take it. Looking up I saw it was Ellis, giving me a smile. I reciprocated and grabbed my shotgun, taking his hand and allowing him to pull me up into a stand. I nodded to Rochelle as a good morning, followed by Coach, and then Nick.

"Woah, woah, sweetheart," Nick interrupted suddenly, reaching for my shotgun. "I don't think you should be running around with that just yet."

Automatically, I moved back, stepping just out of his reach. "I can handle it," I stated, shooting him a serious look, "my daddy taught me how to shoot one of these and he sure as hell didn't hesitate on teaching me _all_ about it."

Nick eyed me for a beat longer, making me a little bit uncomfortable. I didn't like the idea of being in a faceoff with him. But, he shrugged.

"You better not shoot me," he threatened before turning his attention to the others, who were reloading their weapons from a convenient pile of ammo.

Coach tossed me a red pack, one like the pack Ellis had used on my leg yesterday for the burn. "We've been finding these scattered around all over the place," he explained, his expression worried but his eyes kind, "it's better to carry one around… just in case."

Thanking him, I slipped it on my back, tightening the straps on my shoulders. I sure hoped 'in case' didn't come up soon.

"Everyone ready?" Nick asked, his hand on the bar obstructing the door. No one responded in the darkness, most likely out of anxiety of what was coming. He took it as a yes and moved slowly to remove the bar.

I found myself trembling as the door began creaking open, and I jumped when I felt something touch my arm. Turning, I was surprised to see Ellis grinning down at me, his face oddly reassuring. He didn't look scared at all. Hell, if anything, he looked like he was having the time of his life.

I felt immediately comforted by his presence and straightened up a little, watching as Nick opened the door.

We stepped out and, like some sort of sadistic and creepy jack-in-the-box, a zombie popped out of seemingly nowhere. I jumped back on reflex, only to have Ellis shoot it down with his own shotgun.

"Haha, take that you zombie son of a bitch!" He cheered, smiling at each of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Coach roll his eyes and continue on, sneaking up behind a zombie a couple feet up and taking it out with a single swing of his bat.

"Save your bullets, Ellis," he reminded, his voice tired. My father had the same tone of voice whenever I tracked mud into the bar, I remembered grimly.

We trailed after him, Nick hurrying up and walking alongside, both him and Coach in the lead.

"Are you sure this is the right way to the mall?" Nick called back, turning and giving Ellis a skeptical look.

Ellis, in turn, nodded surely. "Yup," he replied, his voice confident, "we're headin' the right way." He stopped a couple steps further, reaching down onto the ground for a crowbar. He picked it up and grinned at it, nodding. Satisfied with his newfound weapon, he moved the shotgun by the strap onto his back.

Still, Nick didn't seem convinced. He snuck a look to Coach as if requesting reassurance. Coach nodded, though, which seemed to be enough for Nick, and he continued trekking along silently.

We made our way past an abandoned CEDA trailer. I peered in, a small bottle of aspirin catching my eye. I reached in and took it, stuffing it into the first aid kit still strapped to my back, and scurried to catch up to the others. I managed to catch up just enough to walk a few paces behind Nick and Coach, alongside Rochelle and Ellis.

"'Bull shifters'?" She mumbled quietly, and I turned to get a look at what she was eyeing. Ellis' shirt, which by this point had its fair share of blood and dirt stains. "Classy shirt there, Ellis…" Rochelle trailed off. By the sound of her voice, I don't think she thought it was too classy.

Ellis didn't seem to notice. He smiled at her, patting his chest. "Yeah, thanks," he said sincerely, "it's my favorite."

We passed a couple of tents, by the looks of it tents that had originally been used to heal anyone passing by or supply them with food or water, both of which were long since used up. Regardless, it caught Nick's attention, and he parted from the group as the rest of us approached a sign. One of those big, fancy ones—the electric ones that roadside work crews used to warn drivers of lanes closing or of roadwork ahead.

LIBERTY MALL — CEDA EVAC, it read. So there was still an evacuation.

"Great, we're heading the right way to the mall," Rochelle announced with a tiny grin on her face. I took a good look at her as Nick rejoined us, studying the sign. She was young, but she looked a lot older with the worry in her eyes. Hell, I think most of us did.

Coach looked around, clearing his throat. "Follow me," he commanded, his voice authoritative. He was already walking off ahead of us, so we didn't really have much of a choice other than to follow him.

"I trust you," Nick said as we walked, a touch of sarcastic humor in his tone, "you look like a man who knows his donuts."

That made Ellis laugh a little bit, and when Rochelle smacked Nick on the arm I couldn't help but to laugh too, earning both of us an infuriated glare.

"Let's find that helicopter," he added, leading us down the nearly deserted street to a gray door and pushing it open. It gave a little bit of resistance but still, Coach's strength overpowered it. We began filing into the dark room it led to.

"I hope we're making a good call by going to that mall," Ellis mumbled, turning his head a little bit to give me an unsure look. I shrugged, holding the door for him when I stopped. There was something behind us. Something odd… a faint… coughing. Gurgling, almost.

Turning around and looking, I saw nothing. Beyond nervous at this point, I began pulling the door shut, when something long and slimy hit it before falling to the ground with a thump. I tried to get a look at what it was, but it started shriveling up and disintegrating almost immediately.

There was definitely something out there. Stepping outside, my eyes searched the scene more frantically but still nothing reared its head. Just the cough again. Scared, I shut the door tight.

"Casey, keep up," I heard Nick call, and I hustled down the stairs and found the other four gathered in a small landing, a fire extinguisher placed on the wall furthest to the small staircase. Everyone stood still as if listening for something. Deciding to announce the weird coughing and slimy thing later, I kept my mouth shut and listened too.

Somewhere, someplace probably not all that far from where we stood at that moment, somebody was crying. By the sounds of it, a woman. I looked up and met my eyes with Coach's, off-put by the fact that he, too, looked scared. I edged closer to Ellis automatically.

"Hey… do you hear that crying?" He whispered, his eyes flicking to each of us.

"Rochelle… that ain't you girl, is it?" Coach asked, turning to Rochelle.

"What?!" She snapped, earning a stern 'shush' from Nick.

Coach turned to me, ignoring her question. "And it's not you either now, is it Casey?"

Slowly, I shook my head. "It ain't me, Coach."

We remained silent for another moment, the faint sobbing still ringing in the room. "I don't like the sound of this crying," Nick muttered, his voice husky and serious, eyebrows knit together.

Coach turned to open the door beside him, shrugging. "Let's keep moving," he whispered, taking a firmer grip of his bat. We followed.

The door let out to a narrow road, something that looked a bit like a highway exit, I suppose. Abandoned cars littered the shoulders, and I couldn't help but frown as I peered into the window of one, a minivan. On the floor by the front seat was a baby pacifier. I shuddered, moving away from it as fast as I could as if it were on fire.

The volume of the crying was getting louder as we moved up the road, and I was so focused on finding the source of it that I didn't notice when the others stopped and Coach held his hand up, causing me to nearly crash into it. He was signaling us to stop, staring at something beyond us. "Hold up," he murmured absently.

I stood on my tip-toes to try and see over him, and Rochelle moved over just a little to allow me the space to see just what was amuck. About twenty feet from us was a woman, her skin shining and gray in the morning sunlight, in what appeared to be a white tattered tank top and matching panties, stained with dirt and quite possibly blood. Her back was to us, but from where we stood, you could still see her long, blonde hair. She was hunched over, sobbing her eyes out. I don't think I ever heard somebody sound as sad as she did, and it pulled at my heartstrings. On some level, she reminded me a little bit of Natalie. The sadness, at least.

"What the hell is with that _crying_?" Rochelle hissed, more to herself than to us. She held her gun down, though, without the intention of shooting at her. I took it as a sign to lower my shotgun, too.

"A crying woman," Nick commented, the same sarcastic grin he'd had on his face earlier while teasing Coach returned, "wait, do you think she's sad the mall's closed?"

I let out a tiny laugh and Nick smirked, pleased with himself. "Shit ain't right," Coach replied, before giving Ellis a light nudge.

"Be careful," he warned.

We watched as Ellis made his way over to her, holding his crowbar down but still up just enough to strike in case she tried anything funny. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to call him back, tell him to best leave her alone. By the looks on the faces of the others, they were thinking something along the same lines. But it was too late. Ellis had already reached her and was speaking to her.

He stood real close to her, his eyes full of concern. "You alright?" He asked, voice as pleasant and charming as ever. I heard her gasp, even from there. "Can I help?" Ellis offered.

He was trying to get a look at her face. She began breathing heavily, each exhalation angrier and louder than its inhalation. She began moving her hands away from her face. Her awfully long, bony, _sharp_ hands…

"Oh shit, that bitch is getting angry…!" Coach mumbled, preparing his bat. We tensed up as well, Rochelle and Nick both holding up their pistols. I held up my shotgun, settling the aim on her just in case she made any sudden movements towards Ellis.

She was growling at that point. By then, we could see her hands clearly. Long, razor-sharp fingers painted dark red. This was no human. She stumbled when a bullet fired from Rochelle's pistol hit her, a weird feral scream escaping her lips.

When she turned around we were able to see the glowing red eyes on her face, her arms outstretched as if daring us to come closer. And then, she began advancing, a piercing screech emitting from her bloodied mouth.

"Oh _Jesus,_ " Rochelle managed to choke out before the woman began running towards her, knife-like fingers held out straight in front of her as if she were preparing to pierce Rochelle. Rochelle ran past us, faster than I'd ever seen anybody run, and that includes my next door neighbor when he accidentally set his pants on fire trying to light a cigarette. The woman trailed after her, not paying any mind to us, still screaming. It was as if she were only aware of Rochelle's existence, only focused on maiming her.

Nick shot after them, pulling a small bottle from his belt. "Molotov!" He screamed before throwing it towards the woman, and moments later she burst into flames. It didn't do much to ruin her focus, though; instead, she changed courses and began her rapid stride towards Nick, screaming even more hysterically. All the while, she desperately tried to put the fire out with her hands.

He fired at her, the panic in his shots apparent. Bullet after bullet hit her, though nothing seemed to slow her down. Still, Nick continued firing until the gun got stuck. He threw it down, instead turning his attention purely to running. Taking advantage of the situation, Ellis delivered a blow to her stomach with his crowbar. She stumbled into Coach's direction, opening the opportunity for him to knock her down with a swing of his bat.

Feeling the same rush I'd felt when I'd thrown the knife on the truck, I ran to her and with the butt of the shotgun smacked down on the center of her forehead. It burst open, and she ceased screaming.

"You nailed that, Casey!" Ellis congratulated, coming up behind me. I gave him a shaky smile as Coach shook his arms out, grinning.

"Woo!" He cheered as if clearing the excitement from his body. "How do you like me now?!" He asked the woman's corpse.

Rochelle joined back up with us, the exhilaration and fear and anxiety on her face apparent. She took one look at the woman and looked as if she was going to be sick. I understood the feeling. Rubbing the shotgun off from blood, brains, and skull in the grass, I looked up at the sky and tried to focus on a cloud. Anything to get the image out of my head. In the meantime, Nick went back for his gun.

"What do you think that thing _is_?" I choked out, trying to hold down the chips I'd had on the truck yesterday while still under the supposed care of a bunch of CEDA agents.

"I think these are the ones they're calling witches," Rochelle replied, walking up to me and taking another glance at the body before looking away. She had a queasy look on her face.

A simple glance at Coach had me realizing that he was staring up at a sign up high above the road, advertising for 'Whitaker's Gun Shop'. The name sounded familiar. A couple men who frequented daddy's bar used to talk about it as if it were some sort of holy land.

"We're getting close to that gun store," Coach updated, taking one final look at the which before continuing on down the street. I was more than happy to follow and get the hell away from that bloody, bashed corpse.

"Let's keep movin'," Ellis seconded, suddenly appearing beside me. He gave me a big, easy grin that I tried to return. It was a little hard to focus on boys after just seeing a zombie's brains laid out on the street. No matter how cute the boy was.


	7. Chapter 7

We carried on down the street until we hit a dead end, save for a dumpster with a ladder stuck on it. Feeling courageous, Nick climbed over it and fired once from his pistol before looking back at us with a real badass look on his face.

"Over this dumpster," he said, continuing on without waiting for any of us.

Coach climbed up first, followed by Rochelle, and then Ellis. All the while, I hung back, holding my shotgun up in case any zombie wandered over to us. I hoped there weren't any more of those witches around, or I'd be in a pissload of trouble. I didn't hear any crying, though, so that must've been a good sign.

I heard a couple more shots over on the other side, and a couple seconds after they stopped Ellis' face popped out over the edge of the dumpster and smiled down at me. He reached his hand down and helped to pull me up, making me stumble just a little bit into his chest. Steadying me, his grin widened. "Careful now," he instructed.

Smiling back at him, I placed my hands on his chest to regain my balance. God, he was cute.

"Come on you two, we gotta get moving," Coach reminded, and I felt my face get hot. He exchanged an amused look with Rochelle. Nick, on the other hand, looked a little peeved off, but I guess I couldn't blame him. Zombie apocalypse wasn't exactly the best time to be thinking about boys.

We hopped off the dumpster as Coach smacked a zombie that was edging towards Rochelle with his bat.

"Hey, watch out for the ones in hazmat suits," Ellis pointed out, signaling towards a zombie that looked a little too much like a CEDA agent for anybody's comfort.

"Fireproof zombies, hooray!" Rochelle cheered sarcastically, and I raised my shotgun and nailed the zombie right in its big yellow chest. Some weird wheezing sounded as the oxygen came out of it, and from its body rolled a jar full of some weird, neon green substance. It reminded me of the shit oozing out of the first zombie I'd encountered in this shitstorm of an apocalypse, back when I knew if Jason was still alive.

"Woah woah, that one just dropped somethin' right there!" Ellis pointed out. He ran up to it, the others and I trailing after. He picked it up and eyed it, a disgusted look growing on his face. Oh, crap, that couldn't be…?

"That had _better_ not be what I think it is…" Rochelle mumbled, pretty much confirming that it was what we all thought it was.

"That can't be a bottle of puke, is it?" Nick asked.

"Why'd they stick it in a jar?" I mumbled from beside Ellis, my stomach doing a couple uncomfortable lurches. By the looks on everybody else's faces, I wasn't alone in that.

"Aw man," Ellis groaned, "a jar is no place for bodily functions." He handed it to Coach, looking away from it.

Coach took it, inspecting the jar. "Grabbing puke!" he announced, before stopping dead and making this odd, surprised look. "I cannot _believe_ I said that…" he mumbled, making all of us laugh—even Nick.

We walked on, approaching an electric street sign that was virtually identical to the first one we'd seen. "We're headin' the right way to the mall," Coach observed, "just keep following the signs."

Not that we had much of a choice. We followed Coach and arrived at yet another dark room. Mounted on the wall was an axe that Nick claimed immediately, allowing no time for any of us to so much as consider taking it. "This feels good," he grinned as he took it in his hands, the sparkle in his eye scaring me a little bit. We continued on, exiting out onto an elevated sort of sidewalk.

"Mall must be close," Nick commented, looking out onto the street below us.

We took a moment to rest, and I stared down into the road. Placing my hands on the railing in front of us, I sighed. There was a single zombie below us, and from the nonchalant form it was wandering aimlessly around in, it hadn't seen us yet. That's all it was doing—wandering around aimlessly, bumbling in between cars. And that alone made me think of the million dollar question—how the _hell_ had the world managed to go to shit, so suddenly, and so _fast_?

A shotgun fired and the zombie hit the ground. Startled, I looked to Ellis, who was giving me this concerned look back. "You looked real down," he explained quietly, "did you know him?"

Speechless, I shook my head. "I was just thinkin' about, uh… things…" I replied.

Ellis smiled at that, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and looking grandly out at the road as if we were looking at some beautiful landscape rather than an empty street. "Well, darlin', no use gettin' upset about it now. You just gotta take life by the balls and _own it_ , my buddy Keith always says." He smiled down at me, squeezing my shoulder.

"Kill all sons of bitches. That's my 'ficial instructions."

I laughed a little, looking up at him and appreciating him and his good looks and good humor.

"Come on y'all," Coach called, his voice tired. "Let's get a move on. We can jump down onto this truck."

The five of us continued our walk across the elevated sidewalk and down onto the abandoned trailer of some truck, and then slipped back down to the road.

A couple silent minutes later, we arrived at some sort of terrace. Nick walked ahead of us, clutching his axe tightly in his hands. It was weirding me out a little bit, but I guess it had its uses, as when he turned a corner and a zombie ran up to him, he had no issue with it. In a single, swift movement he cut its head clean off, a scary look on his face.

"Nice!" Coach congratulated.

Nick smirked back before continuing into the small building, and climbing up some stairs that led to yet another elevated sidewalk, this one blocked off by a chain-link fence. We could see a big yellow sign like the one from earlier.

"Hey, I recognize this!" Ellis yelled from a couple paces behind and to the left of me. "The gun shop's up ahead."

We made our way through until we finally got to the front door of this famous gun store I've heard so much about in my short life. The door resisted a little bit when Ellis first pushed on it, but he was able to overpower it and it opened.

"Oh, ho ho, _payday_ ," Coach mumbled from beside me.

It was like Christmas when we saw inside. Guns just _everywhere_ that they could fit, ammo, even a couple spare health packs. Nick shut the door as we all scrambled in.

"Sweet Jesus," Rochelle exclaimed, inspecting a hunting rifle gleefully, "look at all these guns!"

Nick nodded, laughing and reloading his pistol as he walked. "Candy store for adults," he agreed as he went off to investigate a box labeled 'LASER SIGHT'.

From behind me, Coach's voice boomed. "Let's stock up and keep moving," he commanded and began setting a couple boxes in front of the door.

Looking around the store, I had to say I could understand why the bar's customers thought of this place with such fondness. We had more than our fair share of hunters up in Rayford and, well… this was just hunter heaven.

"Casey!" Ellis yelled suddenly, grasping at my attention. I looked at him and saw him waving around two machine guns like a madman, Coach's head just narrowly escaping a smack from one of them. "How's about you and I get matchin' _machine guns_?" Ellis offered, grinning at the guns a little bit too wildly.

I laughed, shaking my head. "I've never shot one of those before," I admitted, placing my hands on the rifle that Rochelle had been eyeing earlier, "I think I'll just stick with a rifle. This one's a lot like the one my daddy taught me to use."

"I'm not legally allowed to own a gun," Nick announced suddenly, holding up an AK47 that he'd already installed a laser sight into snugly in his hands. "Hope everyone's okay with that."

None of us said a word against this. Hell, if he wasn't allowed to own a gun, that must've meant he had experience with 'em. And right then, I was real glad to have somebody who knew what they were doing with a gun helping us out.

"I don't know how to shoot one," Coach replied gravely, a slow grin spreading on his face, "guess we're even."

I looked over to him, a little surprised, and made my way over to begin to show him how to hold up the rifle. "It's real easy," I said, "you just gotta hold it up like this and—… hold up… is that a _grenade launcher_?"

All of our gazes went over to said weapon, lying on the counter. "Oh _hell_ yeah! I gotta take the grenade launcher!" Ellis cheered, heading straight for it and placing a single hand on it, causing the other three to sing like canaries.

"I don't know how I feel about you walking around with something that could blow the five of us up in one go," Nick snapped, smacking his hand down onto the launcher and preventing Ellis from so much as picking it up. None of us moved. I couldn't say I saw any flaws in that type of logic.

Ellis stared back at Nick, an awful lot like a little kid would at their parent when stopped from getting candy. "That's _hogwash_ , Nick!" he protested. "I've saved our bacon plenty of times with that shotgun. I can handle a teeny little grenade launcher."

A couple more seconds of silence. "Okay, I gotta say that the fact that you're calling it a 'teeny little grenade launcher' worries me," Rochelle confessed, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at all of us with a bit of worry in her eyes.

"Alright, that's two buzzkills. Anybody thinks I'd be fine carryin' this around?" Ellis asked, and his eyes landed immediately on mine. I shifted uncomfortably as I felt the other four look at me. Judging by the intensity of Nick's stare, it was probably a real good idea to just side with Nick and tell Ellis to keep carrying his shotgun, or to pick out some other gun that wasn't a grenade launcher. But, dammit. I couldn't say no to those eyes.

"Shotgun's plenty dangerous, and he ain't shot up any of us yet," I mumbled, looking down. "Ellis is a good shot. I vote yeah. 'S up to you, Coach."

Wrong answer, in Nick's book. "Oh come on, Casey, I think you're being a little lenien—" Nick began, edging towards me, but he stopped when Ellis stepped in his way.

Coach took a deep breath, eyeing the four of us like we were a bunch of knuckleheads. "I guess she's got a good point—he could've blown any of us up to bits, but he didn't." He took another moment to consider. "Alright, Ellis. You can carry that grenade launcher."

I'm real sure that if looks could kill, Rochelle would have to just make do with Nick, with the look he was giving the rest of us. But Coach was the boss, so I guess Nick just had to deal and make peace with it.

Jumping up to sit on the counter, I let Ellis show me the grenade launcher and go on and on about it while Nick came 'round and installed laser sight to each of our guns. In the meantime, Coach went ahead and picked out an auto shotgun, while Rochelle marveled at every gun in the store. She still couldn't pick out just what she wanted and, honestly, I couldn't blame her.

"Ooh, I choose this one!" she said, pointing to a gun mounted on the wall. "Oh wait, this one! No no no no no, I want this one!" when another caught her eye. Finally, she let out a sigh and gave us all an amused, tired look.

"I want them all. Seriously, I want every gun in this store," she announced, and we had another pleasant moment where we could all laugh.

"Dang, Ro, listen to you!" Ellis chuckled, leaning up against a wall by some door to the back of the place. "You sound like my mama."

We all jumped when there was suddenly static, and suddenly a voice boomed over a loudspeaker in the center of the ceiling that we hadn't noticed before. Ellis scooted away from that button real quick as if it were on fire before Coach or Nick could see he'd been the one to press it, and he stood beside me with his finger up to his lips.

"Well hello there," the voice greeted, "my name's Whitaker. I own this establishment."

The five of us exchanged mildly terrified looks.

"Now, normally," the voice self-identified as Whitaker continued, "when five bloodstained looters break into my store, I would shoot them where they stand. But you happen to have caught me at a—"

He stopped abruptly, and we heard gunshots firing outside. I tensed up immediately, my hand flying to Ellis' shoulder. He reached up and took it, running his thumb over it, giving me a warm, comforting smile.

" _Climb that, you green skin sonofabitch_!" Whitaker screamed, but by the sounds of it, he was a couple feet away from his microphone and, most likely, not speaking to us. Ellis laughed a little bit at the outburst.

"...caught me at an opportune time," Whitaker finished as if nothing had happened. "Take anything you need, and come upstairs when you're done."

Coach emptied the contents of the spare health packs into his own, and I jumped down from the counter as Rochelle picked out a silenced machine gun, allowing Nick to install the laser sight. We all filed through the door Ellis had been by moments before, which opened to a set of stairs.

We climbed up only to find ourselves outside of yet another door, this one with some sort of metal opening and a loudspeaker outside. Right by the loudspeaker was one of those fancy surveillance cameras, focused right on us.

"Hello there," Whitaker's voice said from the loudspeaker.

We turned to face the door, silently understanding that it represented Whitaker. I shifted nervously, uncomfortable.

"Hello!" Rochelle called back, her voice light as if she were talkin' to her next door neighbor.

That seemed to encourage Ellis. "Whassup!" he said, equally cheerful. I exchanged a look with Nick.

"I'm guessin' you five'd be heading to the mall for rescue," Whitaker theorized, and we nodded. I wondered if he could see us, but I guess he could since he had the camera and all.

"Yep!" Rochelle replied, just in case.

"I also guess you gonna have a hell of a time doing it, seeing as how those government fools blockaded the road getting there." I turned around when he said that to see that he was indeed correct; off in the distance, not too far from us, a huge truck blocked the road to the mall. What's more, it was crawling with zombies. God dammit, CEDA.

"I've barricaded myself on the roof, with provisions and guns enough to kill every zombie in the city five times over, and eat well while I'm doing it. But in my haste, I forgot to pack cola. Cola and nuts is a weakness of mine—though I do not love it so much that I'd be fool enough to attempt to die in the attempt to procure it."

I let out an audible sigh, knowing where this was going. Somethin' told me we were gonna end up deliverin' some soda for this man. Now, where we'd get it, I had no idea.

"So here is my proposition: If you go find me some cola at yonder food store, I'll clear a path to the mall for you. Now, I have the nuts. I just need cola. So the matter on the table is: do you five have the nuts to get me this cola?"

"Oh, we got the nuts, Mr. Whitaker sir," Ellis replied proudly, crossing his arms over his broad chest and grinning. He winked at me, and I couldn't help but laugh at him.

From behind me, Coach grunted in approval. "Finally, something that makes sense to me," he muttered, "a man and his snacks."

Nick sauntered over to the railing, eyed the store in the distance, and walked back to Whitaker's door. "So let me get this straight," he began, his voice serious, "we get you your shit, and you'll help us get to the mall, right? Okay." He nodded as if he were answering his own questions.

Then his face got _real_ business, and he looked dead into the camera. "You screw us, and I will kill you with your own gun."

How Whitaker answered calmly to that I do not know. Had I been him, I would've added diapers to the shopping list.

"I am a man of my word, sir," Whitaker answered, and his voice seemed plenty trustworthy to me. I mean, I suppose you can't just go 'round making judgments on a man you've never seen, but his voice sounded reassuring and that had to count for something. "Procure me my cola, and I'll clear the path to the mall for you."

I nodded, eyeing the other four around me. The sweat that had drenched Coach's shirt, the cuts on Nick's face, the bruises on Ellis', the sound of Rochelle's neck as she cracked it. They were all exhausted. I hoped the CEDA evacuation was near so that they could get some rest.

"The guns," Whitaker continued, "are on the house."

"Okay, we're in!" Rochelle agreed, nodding to us.

"Alright," Coach whispered, "let's go." He began walking ahead of us, holding his shotgun at the ready. We followed after, first Nick, then Rochelle, then me, and finally Ellis.

"Cola for guns, I think this is like the reverse of what my school did," Ellis laughed, launching both me and Rochelle into a fit of giggles.

The walk to the store didn't take too long, and in just a couple moments we all stood outside it, peering in. It looked empty, and by the sign of a little beeping device above the sliding doors, there was an alarm. We stood outside, preparing.

"So who's gonna carry this cola?" Nick asked, eyeing each of us.

"I ran track for six years," I offered, moving my rifle to my back. He nodded, taking the safety off his gun.

"I can cover you," Ellis said, holding up his grenade launcher and smiling sincerely at me. I smiled back, trying to shake off the bad feeling I got when I thought about Ellis covering me and keeping me safe in a small area by tossing a grenade. Luckily, Nick thought of this small predicament as well and offered his protection, too.

"Coach and I can hang back and cover the exit," Rochelle agreed, standing to the door. She gave us all a nervous, somehow reassuring look. "Alright, you guys ready?" she warned, and we all nodded.

"Stick together," Ellis whispered in my ear, smiling at me.

Rochelle opened up the doors, and a shrill alarm immediately began screeching. "Let's go!" Ellis screamed, and I began running, trying to forget for a minute that I was on a suicide blitz mission to get some crazy old gun shop owner soda in a zombie apocalypse with a conman and a boy my age armed with grenades for cover. Instead, I tried to just focus on running, like I used to in races. Just running.

The soda was located almost in the damn back of the store, as luck would have it. Just as I picked it up I realized the chorus of bullets behind me, and sounds of Ellis' crowbar undoubtedly making contact with unfortunate zombies' heads. I looked up into the face of a growling zombie.

I shot back immediately when a bullet hit the thing dead in the center of the forehead.

"Let's _go_!" Nick urged, and I nodded, shooting out of there as fast as I could go with a pack of soda in my hands. Before long, I ran past Rochelle and Coach.

"I got the cola," I shouted over the alarm, "let's get back!"

I kept running when suddenly a group of zombies were running straight for me. "Woah, back it up!" Ellis called, pulling me back into his chest.

"Heads up!" Coach roared from behind us and threw something that I couldn't quite see. I saw a flash of neon green, and suddenly the substance had exploded into a small cloud behind the zombies. They stopped, sniffed around, and beelined for the cloud, getting lost in its haze and starting to bite and scratch at each other.

Taking the opportunity, Ellis shot a grenade clean into the center of them, and a second later the group of zombies had become a pile of limbs.

"Why don't you remember that for next time, you sons-of-bitches?!" He jeered, laughing. I grabbed his arm and pulled him along behind me, and we darted past the pile towards Whitaker's door as a babbling zombie shot towards me. Tired of the bullshit at that point, I smacked it clean on the side of the head with the cola pack, paying no mind to it as it went down. It was then that I noticed the zombie standing over on the walkway.

It was coughing and sputtering. A lot like the coughing I'd been hearing earlier, and some weird green smoke was coming off it. And a weird, slimy rope. Like the one that had hit the door. Almost like a tongue. A tongue that was wrapped around my waist and pulling me towards the zombie.

"Oh _shit_!" I screamed, dropping the cola automatically and reaching for the weird tongue, trying desperately to get it off me. No use. It was too slippery; too strong. It had me hanging over the ledge in a second, and I could barely breathe.

All I could do was just hang there, struggling.

" _Ellis_!" I coughed out.

He grabbed the rifle I hadn't noticed I'd dropped and shot, and I felt myself falling only to be caught by him. The others had caught up, and Rochelle was filling the zombie that had gotten me with bullets. I heard it explode with an awful wheeze as Ellis steadied me into a stance.

"You alright?" Coach asked, leaning down a little so that he was face to face with me. Rubbing at my neck, I nodded.

"Alright," Coach said, patting my head and picking up the cola I'd dropped, "grabbing cola!"

He ran up the steps, and I took my rifle back from Ellis and the rest of us focused on shooting the incoming zombies. Coach must've delivered Whitaker's cola real fast because it didn't take long for something bright to shoot out of his window right before the truck blew up, cutting off the power to the shop and as a result, the alarm. Everything was quiet as the dust settled.

"Woohoo!" Ellis cheered, looking in the direction of the truck. "There she goes! Let's get outta here!"

He grabbed my wrist and ran off, dragging me behind him.

"Haha! When that man says he gon' clear a path, he _clears a path_!" I heard Coach cheer from up on the walkway.

"Thanks, Whitaker!" Rochelle screamed back.

Footsteps behind us signified to me that Coach, Nick, and Rochelle were all following.

"Good luck to you gang. God watch over you," Whitaker replied from his fancy P.A. system.

The truck's explosion seemed to have wiped out all undead from the area, as we walked by a generally deserted evacuation area. Ellis had slowed down, so me and him were able to catch up to the others and properly walk alongside them.

"Haha, there's the mall!" Coach announced once we'd all caught our breath, and the smell of burning truck had begun to fade away a little.

"I've _never_ been so happy to see a damn shopping center," Ellis admitted, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

We continued walking, and with every step, I got more and more nervous. For an evacuation center, the place sure was quiet.

"Okay… evacuation centers aren't usually this quiet…" Rochelle announced, and I nodded. There were plenty of trucks and tents around us and plenty of supplies, but it looked untouched. As if someone had come in, set up an evacuation center, and then just left.

"Jesus, this place is a ghost town," Nick mumbled.

That was an understatement. "Maybe 's inside?" I suggested though I didn't even sound too sure to myself.

"I guess all the people _must_ be inside," Coach agreed, and when he said it I felt a little bit more comforted. Coach sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

We approached a red iron door, that Coach very loudly identified as a safehouse.

"I swear to God, CEDA better be in that mall," Ellis muttered, and I nodded. I was getting real sick of followin' CEDA around like a damn dog.

"Amen to _that_ ," Coach agreed as he slammed the door shut once we were all inside.


	8. Chapter 8

The safe room at the entrance to the mall was well stocked with ammo, health packs, food, and even a couple of spare weapons. Arriving at it after having fought through that herd of zombies was like a much needed breath of fresh air.

We were all starving, so the cans of food and can opener that someone had conveniently thought of leaving behind were like a godsend.

Once we were all well fed and our weapons reloaded, Coach helped me redo the bandages on the burn on my leg. I didn't say anything out loud out of fear of hurting Ellis' feelings, but Coach did a much better job of wrapping it up. It made sense—he told me he was used to wrapping up sports injuries for his players. When he finished, I pulled our my pocket knife and cut the bandage before storing it in my back pocket for safe-keeping.

"Are we going to address the fact that it's dead quiet out there?" Nick inquired suddenly from his spot in the corner where he sat. He looked out at each of us, the disappointment in his eyes apparent.

"Alright," Rochelle agreed, looking through the barred window on the exit door, "so it's a bit quiet. I still say we should check it out."

I nodded furiously in agreement. Sure, the chances were looking more and more slim, but I still wanted to believe that CEDA was waiting for us somewhere within the mall. Besides, it wasn't like we had a wide variety of other options at hand.

Ellis shrugged. "Maybe the evac's a little further in the mall," he suggested, pouting at the floor as if he didn't believe that too much. I sighed, rubbing his back gently in comfort.

"Aw god, I hate malls!" Nick growled.

Sighing, Coach surveyed us and made his way to the center of the safe room. "Everybody," he said, "gather 'round."

We made our way over to Coach, standing around him and forming a small circle. "Let's pray," he said, making Nick scoff and retreat back to his brooding corner. I stayed put, though. Growin' up with a man like my dad, I'd grown accustomed to praying for things and saying grace before supper. Shoot, I was surprised I hadn't prayed up until that moment. So, Rochelle, Coach, Ellis, and I all bowed our heads.

"Dear Lord," Coach began, his hands together, "see us safely through our time of prowl in this mall. And please, Lord, let the food court be okay."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at that last comment. "Amen," Coach concluded, and Ellis and I opened our eyes. I saw he was having trouble keeping from laughing, too.

"Amen," Rochelle, Ellis, and I seconded.

Rochelle went on, though. "Lord, have mercy on Coach and spare the food court!" she added, her head still bowed in prayer. I giggled a little bit, grateful to have such pleasant people around me.

I glanced at Nick, who was eyeing the four of us as if we were all just a bunch of crazy lunatics. "You should get in on this prayer too, Nick," I suggested, my voice light, "now's the time to get in touch with religion if there ever was any."

He raised an eyebrow at me in a way that made me feel more than a bit silly. "Yeah, sweetheart, I'm good."

Coach made his way to the barred door, peering through it. "CEDA's got to be around here _somewhere_ ," he mumbled, crossing his arms, "let's find this evac and get out of here."

Nobody had to be told twice. "Anybody sees a men's store, let me know—I got blood on my suit," Nick instructed, following after Coach. I exchanged a glance with Rochelle, and neither of us had to say anything. We both knew the other was laughing at Nick in her head anyway.

"Man, I love malls! I do!" Ellis said, grinning off at nothing in particular. "Once, I was in this mall up in Atlanta and these guys were dancin' for like, money and stuff, and my friend Dave and I was all like—"

"Y'know what I like best about your stories, Ellis?" Nick interrupted, his voice exasperated. Ellis glanced over to him, his head cocked to the side a little in a darling way. "The sound they make when they stop," Nick finished. "Why don't we just try quiet time for a while?"

Ellis glared back at Nick, and I couldn't help but to glare, too. It was safe to say I was a permanent member of Ellis' side at that point.

Rochelle sighed, irritated as well. "Shut up, Nick," she commanded, before turning to Ellis. "Sweetie, I normally like your stories, I do, but… not now, okay?"

Ellis let out an audibly disheartened sigh before looking down at the ground. "Okay," he agreed.

Dismayed at seeing him so upset when he was usually in such a peppy, upbeat mood, I looped my arm through his and smiled up at him, desperate to get him to put that cheesy grin right back on his face. It worked a little, I guess, and he shot me the beginnings of a smile.

By the door, Coach cocked his shotgun before looking at all of us. "Ready to get it on?" he murmured, his hand on the iron bar blocking the door. A wave of 'yes'es and 'yeah's sounded through us, and each of us pulled out our freshly reloaded guns.

"Alright, let's roll," he said as he pulled the bar off and opened the door.

We filed out of the safe room behind him in our usual order of Coach, Nick, Rochelle, myself, and finally Ellis. For the first couple of paces, the mall seemed to be pretty empty—both of CEDA agents, and zombies. But, it didn't take long for us to encounter one mauling the severed arm of another one, as well as a couple of wanderers. A few shots from our guns took 'em all down pretty quickly, though.

Nick lucked out real soon and found his oh-so-desired men's store, and he and Coach headed in for Nick to go and find his lipstick or whatever it was he needed so badly. Ellis, Rochelle, and I stood watch at the store's entrance.

There weren't many wandering infected around, save for the lone one that tried in vain to sneak up on Rochelle only to be pumped full of lead. She reloaded her gun and looked at us, a glint in her eye.

"Why didn't anyone tell me shooting these things felt like this?" she queried, eyes flickering from Ellis to me and back.

Ellis rubbed the back of his neck, shooting me a nervous glance. "Oh, we like to keep that secret from you big city types," he explained, his voice as pleasant as ever.

I nodded, agreeing with him. "Yeah, if there's any trouble it's nice to know y'all ain't armed," I added.

A couple minutes rolled by before Nick and Coach emerged from the store. Nick looked virtually identical to how he had when he'd entered, though I suppose he had fewer bloodstains on him. He looked mighty pleased with himself, anyway.

They took the lead again, edging towards an escalator that had stopped working. "Up this escalator," Nick ordered, and the rest of us followed him up the steps.

"Keep an eye out for the evac center," Coach's voice rumbled from behind us, and I turned my head to get a better look at him. "Also the food court. I am _starving_ ," he said. Honestly, considering we'd all just eaten a whole bunch of cans of food, I was surprised he was still hungry.

When we reached the top of the escalator, Ellis' attention was absorbed instantly by a nearby jewelry store. He headed straight for it, under the basis that he wanted to pick out somethin' nice for his mama, and that she'd really appreciate the effort especially given the circumstances. I wondered how he could be so sure he'd see her again, but there was no arguing with Ellis when something set in his head like that. I didn't want to bum him out either, so Rochelle and I followed him inside while Nick and Coach kept watch that time.

Ellis waited for nobody, so Rochelle and I kinda just hung back while he looked around and picked something out for his ma. He was so consumed in finding something for her, he didn't see the odd tube thing with a little antenna sticking out of it on one of the counters by the entrance. Rochelle picked it up, eyeing it.

"Oh, I like this," she whispered, and I nodded slowly. It looked like some sort of bomb. She strapped it to her belt loop, and we continued looking around.

"You married, Rochelle?" I wondered aloud, marveling over the diamond rings in the display. Even with the power out, they sparkled and looked straight out of a fairytale.

Rochelle smiled faintly. "Oh, no," she replied, "my boyfriend and I never really made plans about that. I mean, we talked about it sure, but both of us were too into our careers to worry about that."

She sighed. "Not that there's much of a point in thinking about that anymore," she admitted sadly, and I reached out for her hand. She squeezed my hand, grateful, and let go.

I bit my lip and reached into the shattered display case and picked up one particular ring, inspecting it closely. "My daddy always looked forward to my weddin'—more than I did. Shoot, I think he wanted me to get married more than I did. Always talked about walkin' me down the aisle, and how fancy I'd look with a big ol' ring on my finger that he'd brag about to his customers. Tell 'em all about how his daughter had a big fat rock on her finger worth more than the whole damn place. Guess he thought I'd marry rich or somethin'."

Glancing up, I saw her smiling a little, and I laughed at the memory. "My old man's the poster child for pride."

I sighed, giving one final look to the ring before setting it down. "Sucks the whole apocalypse had to happen and ruin everythin'. No big fat rock on my finger for me," I sighed. "I think I'll just wait outside."

I stepped out and waited by Nick and Coach, though by the looks of it, no zombies wanted to mess with us at that moment. Before long, Rochelle and Ellis exited the jewelry store and we were on our way.

We paused at a directory sign, in part so that Nick could figure out the most likely spot for an evacuation, but also so that Coach could locate the food court.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ellis, bored, thought of nothing better to do than to shoot grenades at the mannequins around us. He nudged me and nodded towards one of them, holding up his grenade launcher and aiming. I watched the mannequin in anticipation.

It blew, launching mannequin bits all over the place, and was a pretty good way to laugh off the bitterness about the apocalypse from earlier. Ellis and I busted a gut laughing—it _was_ pretty damn funny. Coach didn't seem to think so, though.

"Ellis, dammit!" He growled, "I'll take that gun away from you!". Ellis, in turn, tightened his grip on his grenade launcher, but we were all distracted by the sudden growl of a zombie.

I turned to look at the source and found myself looking at a very large and round zombie. The navy blue shirt it wore was far too small to accommodate its bloated belly, and when we looked at it, it made a real angry, unhappy noise.

"Oh, shit—fat guy!" Rochelle warned, and she and Coach pulled up their guns to shoot at it, and I'm real sure that Ellis snuck a grenade somewhere in the fire, too. The zombie burst, spraying zombie guts all over the place. I shuddered, disgusted.

"I got it," Ellis announced, shooting everybody a proud grin and draping his arm over my shoulder in triumph.

Rolling her eyes, Rochelle shook her head. "Ellis, that was _me_ ," she replied, her face smug.

Ellis furrowed his eyebrows, shaking his head. "That wasn't yours, it was mine," he argued, turning to get a better look at Rochelle. I swear they looked like arguing little kids.

" _What!"_ Coach demanded, jumping into the argument, his eyes flickering between the both of them. "Aw hell no, boy! That was _me_!"

The three of them started disputing over who killed the walker, and Nick shot me a look as if telling me that he and I were surrounded by idiots. "Jesus," he grunted, aggravated, "what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

The others saw no point in discussing the matter any further, and instead, we continued on in our usual setup.

"Casey, you agree, that was mine, right?" Ellis whispered, jogging up a little so that he was walking beside me. I beamed up at him and nodded, delighted when he gave me a big grin in return, clearly proud of himself.

"Down this escalator!" Nick called from the front of the line. Rochelle seconded him, calling back that the evacuation was that way.

Coach rubbed the back of his neck, clearly nervous about something. "Hope the food court's okay," he mumbled. "I could roll up a whole pizza right now. Eat it sub-style."

Shoot, pizza sounded like Heaven right then and there. "Hell yeah," Ellis agreed.

Coach chuckled, glancing back at the two of us. "If I see a zombie running at me with a sample tray, I ain't shootin' it," he said, and I smiled back, amused, but frowned once I realized we actually were in the food court.

There was only a handful of wanderers in it, ones we killed easily with our guns. I'd been hoping to find some extra food in there for the road, but by the looks of it, we weren't getting a thing. Unless we wanted to eat zombie corpse, of course.

I gazed at Coach, unsurprised to see the crestfallen look on his face. "Poor food court never stood a chance," he whispered quietly, and I reached up to place a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Still, we were all pretty let down.

"Okay, so it's a little deserted… there _might_ still be an evac, deeper in," Rochelle said hopefully. I don't think anybody believed her much that time, though, not even herself. Regardless, Coach began leading the way again.

We strolled through the mall, and I took a moment to note all the stores that had outlets back in Rayford. It was real strange, seeing all of them in this post-apocalyptic world.

"Disco pants and haircuts?" Nick asked suddenly, dragging me out of my thoughts. "Man, lots of space in this mall."

I followed his gaze, chuckling a little bit when I saw the store he'd been talking about. It looked like the type of place my daddy'd go to. _And_ get defensive over if anybody ever poked fun at it.

Coach laughed, too, amused by the store. "About time a store gives a man a haircut while he buys himself some pants," he replied, and though he was laughing I could tell he was serious. He definitely would've gone shopping there, if he hadn't.

"I hate your life, Coach," Nick muttered.

Their bickering was comforting, and I laughed. It didn't sound too different from the conversations of the bar's frequent customers who took up all the barstools, and argued amongst themselves over sports and whose wife was the prettiest. The mirth subsided rapidly, though, when a faint growling could be heard coming from behind us.

"You hear that?" Rochelle whispered, and we all turned, looking up at an elevated walkway where I was certain the noise was coming from.

Ellis shivered, reaching for his crowbar and moving his grenade launcher to his back. "Oh I do _not_ like the sound of that," he mumbled.

Holding his gun up, Nick trained his eyes on the walkway. "What is that? Is somebody beating a horse or what?"

We remained silent for another moment, and another growl came from the walkway. "From the sound of it, it's 'bout to get a whole lot worse…" Coach observed, before turning back to the doorway we had been about to head into. "Let's keep moving."

The four of us followed suit, careful about climbing up the fallen door that had created a ramp into the hallway. I climbed in as fast as I could, nervous about Ellis being the last one to enter the hallway, given that off-putting growling coming from outside. He was quick about it, though, and gave me a reassuring smile as the five of us continued on.

By the looks of it, we'd entered the employees-only section of the mall. Metallic shelves filled with boxes lined the walls, with a couple old copiers and machines sprinkled throughout the room, looking as if nobody had touched them in a couple years. It seemed to be a good alternative to walking 'round the mall, as it was mostly void of zombies save for a single one that Coach took out with his bat.

As we moved forward, a metallic glint within one of the shelves caught my eye. Moving from the group for a moment, I made my way towards it and cast aside a couple of lightweight boxes, and found myself face to face with a katana. Beside it was a strange looking paddle.

"Oh man, a _ninja sword!_ " Ellis whooped as I pulled it out, a smile on my face. It was light, and I knew I just _had_ to have it. I moved the rifle to my back and pulled out the paddle as well.

I looked to Rochelle, the only one of us who didn't have a spare weapon. "There's this paddle thing here, too," I said and handed it to her.

She eyed it skeptically, before smiling. "Gonna _whack_ something with this," she grinned, and we kept going.

We walked into yet another hallway, a cluster of dead zombies right on the floor to the entrance. I minded them, disgusted, and we stood in a group in the small hallway.

"We better search some of these rooms," Nick mumbled, heading straight for a door off to the side. Rochelle, Ellis, and I followed, squinting in the darkness and being careful not to bump into any of the shelves.

"There's some aspirin here," Rochelle announced, and from the sound of it, she picked it up and pocketed it. I let out a breath, looking around the dim glow of Nick's flashlight for anything else that might be of use.

Not a moment later, Coach could be heard screaming from the hallway. There was another voice mixed in with his, too—some sort of crazed laughing.

" _Get this thing off me!"_

The four of us shot out of the room just in time to see Coach exit the hallway, something on his shoulders and covering his eyes with bloodied hands.

"Holy shit, that thing's riding him!" Rochelle screamed, running after Coach and the zombie with her paddle. The rest of us ran after them.

"That don't look dignified!" Ellis yelled.

Rochelle shot off ahead of us, swinging at the zombie with her paddle. But, Coach was faster, and every swing she took was in vain as he bumped away blindly, trying to get the zombie off of himself. It was the bullets from Nick's gun, finally, that killed the zombie. I shivered, realizing one of them could have hit Coach.

"Bullseye," Nick smiled.

Ellis, Rochelle, and I stood in awe. "Woah, Nick…" Ellis mumbled, "well… why doesn't it surprise me _you're_ good with a gun?"

Nick only glared in response, but I had to agree. Even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, Nick looked pretty sketchy.

In the meantime, Coach threw the now dead zombie off his back with a grunt. He glared down at it, his eyes hard, his breathing heavy. "It ain't right for a man to be ridden like that," he spat at the corpse.

"Thanks," he called back to Nick.

"Whatever," Nick replied before sauntering away like a sulking teenager.

We followed after him, only to wind up in a mostly intact children's clothing store. The glass window was entirely unscathed, not a single scratch on it. Same went for the glass door in the center, that looked securely sealed.

"I've got a feeling this alarm's gonna get us some attention," Nick mumbled, his eyes focused on a zombie limping outside the store.

We watched it walk by, not noticing us. "Be careful," Rochelle added.

The zombie must've heard that because all of a sudden she looked up and squealed, and started running right towards us. I braced myself, waiting for her to hit the glass uselessly.

"I got it," Ellis announced, and held up his grenade launcher, and fired.


	9. Chapter 9

" _NO!"_

The explosion took care of the zombie, as well as the entirety of the glass window. It shattered almost in slow motion, but we didn't hear it do so on account of the blaring alarm screeching over it.

"Oh, shit!" Ellis screamed once he'd realized his mistake.

"God _damn it_!" Nick cursed.

Coach turned to Ellis, fire in his eyes. "Boy, you ain't got _any_ sense in that head, do you?!" he roared, furious. A tiny bit of me wanted to stick up for Ellis, but the rest of me wanted to smack him upside the head. Working hard to keep my cool, I settled for a simple squeeze of his hand.

Not far from us, a horde of zombies could be heard shrieking in delight at having found the location of their next possible meal. That was enough to knock action back into Nick, who set off running through the shattered window, the rest of us trailing after him.

"We need to turn off this alarm!" he screamed, looking around in search of anything useful.

"Keep going!" Rochelle called back, just as a group of undead came at us from the left. I took off, running with the group, opting for my rifle and shooting into the sea of zombies chasing after us.

It didn't take long for them to overpower us, and we stopped running. Concerned with the danger of accidentally shooting one of the others, I switched out for the katana once again and began slashing at the zombies. It was a bit foreign—and much lighter than I expected—but overall, it was doable. I mean, I guess it was doable after I got over the fact that zombie blood raining down on me was just gonna be a regular thing from there on out.

"Hey!" Rochelle screamed and threw something that glowed red over everybody's heads. It distracted the zombies well enough, and they all ran after its beeping form and started kicking and slashing at it as if it were alive. In a couple seconds, it exploded, effectively killing all the zombies around it.

"Damn," Rochelle smiled, glancing at us.

Coach wasted no time and took off running down a different path. "We've got to turn off that alarm!" he reminded, and we followed after, shooting and slashing at the zombies that ran towards us. It took me a second to realize Ellis wasn't with the group.

" _Hoodie dude!"_

Without a second thought, I shot off in the direction of Ellis' voice. There, lying on the walkway with some hooded zombie trying to scratch and slash at him, was Ellis.

"Ah—OWW! GET 'IM OFF! GET HIM OFF ME!"

"Ellis!" I screamed, and before anybody could argue or object, I ran up and slashed the katana as hard as I could, barely registering the slicing noise it made as it hit the zombie's neck and decapitated it.

I turned to Ellis, exhilarated. "Are you okay?!" I shrieked, probably sounding a lot more hysterical than I would've hoped for. He, on the other hand, propped up on his elbows and grinned up at me.

"That was awesome!" he cheered, standing and accepting the hug I gave him.

Coach made his way over, inspecting the zombie's head with his foot. "Think they call them hunters," he said, his face serious.

"'S as good as any other name," Ellis responded, rubbing his chest before we all followed behind Coach again.

Rochelle and Nick had gone ahead of us, and just as we reached the room they were in, the alarm shut off.

"Alarm off!" I heard Nick announce from inside.

"Holy _shit_ , that was annoying…" Rochelle mumbled. I nodded in response. Shit, if I didn't have to deal with another alarm like that for the rest of my probably very short life, I would die happy.

Coach blinked for a second, looking around. "I can still hear it in my head… but I _think_ the alarm is off."

"My ears ain't _ever_ gonna stop ringing," Ellis agreed.

I leaned back against the wall, trying to calm down a little bit. My heart was beating like crazy from the rush and being surrounded by zombies, and from seeing the one that had jumped Ellis. I guess I was the only one looking for a moment to calm down, though, because Nick insisted we continue on with a grave 'let's go' before disappearing through a dark doorway.

This hallway seemed to have been the site of a larger scuffle. Piles of dead bodies and splashes of blood decorated it as if it were Christmas decorations on a front lawn. I was disappointed to note that I was completely unfazed by it at that point.

"Damn… where _is_ everybody? Starting to creep me out," Coach mumbled from the front of the line, and I could've laughed. I'd realized a long time ago that there was no CEDA evacuation happening in this mall, at least not for us, at least not today.

Nick was about as surprised as I was. "It's _starting_ to creep you out?" he demanded, voice incredulous. "And I thought this place was a shithole when there were people in it."

Coach glared at him but rolled his eyes once he remembered that arguing with Nick was something pretty hopeless. "Evac's this way," he said, turning a corner.

We stopped once again when we heard a loud screech, like nails on a chalkboard, a little ways down the hall. I reached for Ellis' hand automatically, determined not to let something jump him again in one day. He squeezed my hand gently.

"Hear that?" Nick asked.

"What in the hell is making that noise?!" Ellis countered.

From behind a large yellow bin came a tall, thin woman in pigtails, wearing a saggy white tank top. The entirety of the bottom half of her jaw was missing, leaving only a small, red hole from which she shot some sort of bright green acid at our feet.

"What the _hell_?!" Ellis screamed, pulling me away from it just as the splashes that jumped from the growing puddle started burning on my skin. I reached down and wiped them away with the sleeve of my jacket on my free hand.

"What is this burning stuff?!" Coach yelled.

In the heat of the moment, Ellis aimed and shot a single grenade at the zombie, exploding her instantly. More acid formed where she was shot.

"Oh, what in the hell did that thing do?!" Nick demanded, staring at the neon green puddle from the edge. It sizzled, and slowly began to clear off. I don't know if it was evaporating, or getting absorbed by the floor.

Rochelle let out a loud sigh, slamming her hand down on her leg in frustration. "Oh, _Jesus_! This zombie spits burning shit!"

We took a moment to catch our breath. "Casey, you alright?" Coach asked, nodding to my bare legs. I shrugged a little.

"It burned a little bit, but I'm okay."

Coach nodded, and I relaxed when Ellis pulled me closer to his side and placed a gentle yet daring kiss on my cheek. Then, he looked up at Nick and offered a cheeky grin.

"That an ex-girlfriend of yours, Nick?" he joked.

Rochelle snickered, and Nick just glared before rolling his eyes.

Our walk continued out onto a larger walkway, just absolutely _piled_ with dead bodies. Blood stained the floor and walls. Over the top, like some pathetic, sadistic cherry, was an orange sign reading 'CEDA EVACUATION CENTER'. It was a little hard to look at.

I turned my head and buried my face in Ellis' shoulder, feeling like I was going to cry. Sure, I had no hope in CEDA, but it still wasn't nice to see my suspicions come to life and leave us all so hopeless.

"Jesus, I knew it!" Nick snarled. "There's nothing here!"

Nobody could argue with that. "What the hell is CEDA _doing_?" Coach mumbled as he continued on, stepping over countless corpses.

"Looks like a slaughterhouse in here," Ellis agreed, guiding both him and myself through the body maze. His voice sounded as disappointed as I felt.

There was a long silence after that. "We're not getting rescued here, are we?" Rochelle mumbled though it sounded more as if she were saying it to herself rather than asking us.

"Naw man," Ellis replied.

Nick sighed, and in a second his fist made contact with the wall, leaving a dent. "CEDA. Leaving me twice in one day," he muttered. "Lesson learned."

"I hope somebody got out alright…" Coach mumbled.

He led us down yet another walkway, his steps growing heavier and slower with each pace. We all walked with a little more weight in our steps, the disappointment dragging us down like a heavy cloth.

"Okay, so the evac station's abandoned," Nick recapped, "and… we're at the center of a zombie-filled building. On the bright side, we're all probably gonna die."

I sighed at that, holding my katana down by my side and leaning into Ellis. I never felt so useless in my whole life. "Hope you're wrong… but, I know you're not." Rochelle replied.

Ellis was the one to break the grim atmosphere. "Hey, right up here some of the refugees built a safe room!" he piped up suddenly, and we all looked up. He was right—up ahead was one of those promising red iron doors.

"We're gonna have to save ourselves, people," Nick announced as we all filed in before Rochelle shut the door.


	10. Chapter 10

This next safe room didn't have nearly as many supplies as the one prior, save for some ammo and a couple of bags of candy and chips. We reloaded our weapons with the ammo and handed out the food to carry in our health packs for later when we got out of the mall.

If we got out of the mall.

There was a real long moment of silence, all of us just relaxing and catching our breath after the realization that our rescue was entirely up to us. I guess it worked for thinking about what we were going to do next, too.

"Anybody know who the racecar guy is?" Rochelle inquired all of a sudden, and my head snapped up to see just what she was talking about. My jaw almost dropped once I saw the sign. I'd never heard of anybody who didn't know who Jimmy Gibbs Junior was, at least not in Georgia.

Ellis and I were automatically drawn to it. Jimmy Gibbs Junior. At Liberty Mall.

"Haha!" Ellis cheered, grinning up real friendly-like at the poster of Jimmy. "Just the best stock car racer of all time!" he explained to Rochelle, and it was no understatement. Me and everybody else in the state had been watching his races for as long as I could remember. At home, at my daddy's bar, at my friend's houses. _Nobody_ missed Jimmy Gibbs Jr.

It was as if Ellis realized that he was indeed explaining to somebody who Jimmy Gibbs was. "Try readin' a book sometime," he added, his voice suddenly turning cold with disdain.

But Rochelle only rolled her eyes and glanced back at the poster. "Jimmy Gibbs Jr.," she said, her voice a lot drier than I would have liked. "Yay," she said sarcastically.

Nick didn't try to hide his ignorance any better. "Who the hell is Jimmy Gibbs Jr.?" he demanded, and I gasped. I turned to look at him, shocked, but he just glared back at me as if _I_ were the one speakin' blasphemy.

"I heard of Jimmy Gibbs!" Coach replied, smiling. "The man's a stock car _legend!_ "

I grinned and nodded to Coach, glad to see someone who actually knew what in the hell was going on. But Nick, being Nick, only rolled his eyes and made a look of disgust. "I'm getting sick of looking at this guy's face," he snapped.

"Yeah, well your face ain't exactly a cool drink on a hot day either," I shot back.

Coach chuckled, raising a hand to me as if telling me to keep cool. He glanced back at Nick. "Well, trust me. In these parts, he's as famous as… Elvis. Or the President."

Nick just scoffed. "Really?" he asked, the doubt in his voice real clear, "'Cause he looks like an asshole.

Oh _hell_ no.

That obviously struck a chord with Coach, Ellis, and myself, as we all instantly jumped the moment Nick said that. But, in the end, it was Coach who spoke first.

"Get your ass movin', Nick," he commanded.

Ellis held his hand up to Coach. "Now you hold on one second," he interrupted, his voice even. "You've been makin' jokes about Savannah all day and I've held my tongue. But you do _not_ belittle Jimmy Gibbs Junior."

He turned back to appreciate the poster of Jimmy. "That man is the pride of Georgia," he continued. "I would take a bullet for that man."

"Amen," Coach and I agreed at the same time.

But Ellis wasn't quite finished. "If the laws of nature allowed it… I would bear that man's children," he said.

Alright, that weirded me out just a little bit. I exchanged a glance with Coach and saw Rochelle and Nick doing the same thing. Ellis didn't seem to notice any of it, though.

"Aw shit, we missed him?!" he moaned. "God dammit, I coulda gotten a picture taken with Jimmy Gibbs' stock car! This apocalypse is startin' to piss me off."

I patted him on the back, sympathizing with him. I mean, sure, the apocalypse had been pissing me off for a while now, but adding in the fact that we'd all missed Jimmy Gibbs Junior and his stock car was just adding insult to injury. Sure, maybe I still would've been in New York at the time, but it was the thought that counted.

Nick wasn't having any of it, though. I guess he still thought the whole Jimmy Gibbs Jr. thing was pretty dumb. He made his way to the iron door and threw the bar off without asking anybody for so much as an opinion. "What are we waiting for?" he asked us, glarin' off straight ahead like only he did. "Let's go."

I drew my katana and we filed out, though this time, I opted to walk beside Ellis rather than ahead of him. I'd be damned if I let another incident happen on my watch.

"Jimmy Gibbs Jr. is the _man_. I mean, I don't know anybody like that man. But there was this guy I knew," Ellis began, and I could tell he was about to go off on another one of his storied. "He raced dirt tracks—not stock cars, but open-wheeled cars, y'know? And he was racin' once, and a _goat_ —"

Coach interrupted before Ellis could say anything further about dirt tracks and goats. "We ain't got time for this, Ellis," he uttered, his voice weary. Part of me thought he was still peeved off about Ellis shattering the display window and settin' off the alarm earlier.

"Okay," Ellis replied, nodding his head before looking to me very as-a-matter-of-factly, "but there _was_ a goat."

I looked back at him and laughed. "Tell me the rest of that story when we get a chance, yeah?" I asked him. It sounded interesting enough, and I wanted to know what this goat had done, exactly.

He grinned back at me and nodded real enthusiastically.

There wasn't much to walk around through. The hallway that the safe room had let out to exited to a walkway that builders had set up for quick access to other construction areas, and it only led out to an elevator.

"Doesn't look like we're gettin' rescued," Ellis rambled as we looked out onto the empty atrium. It looked untouched, pristine like snow does before anybody has a chance to stomp on it. CEDA definitely hadn't been there, or anywhere near it.

"Ugh, there's _nobody_ here," Rochelle pointed out.

Coach sighed, and I knew he still wanted to believe in our rescue. "I won't lie, this don't look good."

Nick kept on walking, and the four of us followed after him without saying anything more. But I kept my eyes lingering over the railing for just a moment longer.

And then I saw it.

I gasped when I did, reaching for Ellis' hand instantly and gesturing over to it. Jimmy Gibbs Jr.'s stock car. It was still here.

"Ho-lee _shit_ ," Ellis breathed, squeezing my hand the moment he laid eyes on it. We grinned at each other like fanatical little kids, and after that, I swear there was an extra bounce in his step.

The others weren't in such a good mood as us. "So much for getting rescued," Nick grumbled from the front of the line. "Any ideas?"

Rochelle sighed. "Yeah, I'm not getting a strong ' _we're rescued!'_ vibe here," she agreed.

Coach laughed at that, loud and booming. "No," he said. " _Hell_ no."

We piled into the elevator, and I continued looking out to Jimmy Gibbs' racecar from the glass window of it. It was just _beautiful,_ pristine. I barely noticed when Coach pushed the elevator's button and we began to descend with a heavy creak. Elevator must've been real close to dead.

"Alright, so," he said, getting right down to business, "getting evac'ed ain't happening. Anybody got an idea, now's the time."

Nobody said much of anything, and I looked up to see Rochelle, Nick, and Coach staring at the floor as if racking their brains for any ideas on how to get the hell out of that death mall. Ellis, on the other hand, was staring off at a colossal poster of Jimmy Gibbs Junior himself hung off on one side of the atrium's ceiling.

"What you thinkin', Ellis?" I asked him.

He glanced back to me, his green eyes full of thought, back to the poster, and then to the other members of the group. "Y'all remember those ads we saw on the way in?" he wondered. "Well, I think I got an idea how to get us some wheels."

He _wasn't_.

He was.

Oh, I love that boy.

I grinned at him, already knowing what he was gonna suggest. And hell, I damn _approved_.

He smirked back at me, clearly proud of himself for having come up with such a badass escape plan. "Let's go find Jimmy Gibbs' stock car. We get that thing gassed up, we will _drive_ outta here! We just gotta find it, gas it up, and I'll drive that thing to New Orleans my damn self."

Coach let out a boisterous laugh, a big smile on his face. I don't think I'd seen him smile like that ever, not until that very moment. "All the way to New Orleans! Baby, that sounds like a _plan!_ "

Nick nodded, eyeing Ellis as if he were real impressed. I was sure he was gonna compliment Ellis on his good thinking. "I'll agree to that idea. But I'm driving."

Ellis scoffed automatically, and I was sure glad he did; I didn't think somebody so adamant on insulting the good name of Jimmy Gibbs should be driving his stock car. If anybody was driving that thing it was Ellis, Coach, or myself.

"Yeah," Ellis chuckled, his voice sarcastic as he pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, "only if I get killed. Otherwise, you better kill me. 'Cause _I'm_ driving."

The others nodded, and just like that, Nick was outnumbered. "What a fun road trip this'll be," he muttered, though I could tell he didn't think it was gonna be any fun at all. Hell, he was probably just sour on the fact that he wasn't gonna drive the racecar since he'd been such a jerk about it before.

Rochelle eyed each of us, still a little bit skeptical. "Well," she said, "it's a plan. I don't know if it's a _good_ plan, but… it _is_ a plan."

"It's a good plan," I insisted immediately. Something in me just really wanted to make sure Rochelle approved of it.

That was good enough for Ellis. "Alright. I'm bettin' the gas tank will probably be empty. We're gonna have to gas it up before we haul ass."

Everybody could agree to that. "Soon as these doors open," Coach warned, his voice low, "get ready to _move_."

As if on cue, the elevator finally hit the bottom floor with a heavy thud, and the doors shot open a little faster than I think anybody who'd ever programmed an elevator ever intended them to open. And just like that, the elevator gave its final sputter of life, and the power in it gave out.

The first thing we saw was an orange gas can conveniently propped up against the wall. Now, I'm not saying there's a lot of odd things in Georgia, but I had to say that if I expected gas to be lyin' around in a mall in any state, the first one I'd put my money on would definitely be my home state. But I wasn't about to complain.

Coach shot out and grabbed it, holding it close as if it were a baby. "Let's get this car gassed up!" he called to us.

We ran around the elevator and there, in all her glory, was Jimmy Gibbs' sky blue stock car.

"There she is!" Ellis squealed, sounding as excited as I felt. I ran to it as fast as my legs would let me, reaching out and placing my hand on the hood as soon as I could. It was like shaking hands with royalty.

"Sorry 'bout this, Mr. Gibbs," Coach mumbled as he propped open the fuel lid and pouring in the gas.

Ellis shook his head earnestly. "Jimmy Gibbs Jr. ain't gonna mind if we borrow his stock car. He's a very generous man," he replied to Coach, talkin' real sure of himself.

Nick rolled his eyes and stifled a laugh, and I elbowed him lightly in the arm, shooting him a disapproving glare. But he only laughed at me.

Just as Coach poured in the last few drops of the gas inside the gas tank into the car, an eerie groan boomed from every direction around us. Within seconds, there was a heavy banging on a nearby door I hadn't noticed before, and a small piece flew off it.

Zombies.

"Oh, shit!" Rochelle yelled, grasping her gun instinctively.

The door that had a piece break off it broke down, and out shot a stream of zombies, trampling the door. "God dammit, it's gettin' good!" Nick screamed over them, raising his AK and shooting into the crowd of zombies. Rochelle and I didn't have to be told twice, and we both pulled our guns up and trained them on the dead ones.

"We need more gas!" I heard Coach scream by the car, followed by a scared 'watch out' from Ellis, and finally the unmistakable explosion of a grenade even farther down.

It was open season on us. We stood in a circle, firing off at zombies running towards us in every direction. Ellis had ditched the grenade launcher momentarily for a couple of twin pistols from his work pants that I hadn't noticed he had tucked in, which was a nice call. I don't think we would've lasted very long with grenades explodin' all over the place. To my left, Coach shot at the rushing zombies with his shotgun, and even further around the circle Nick and Rochelle alternated fire onto the oncoming groups.

It was pretty badass, I gotta say.

The zombies started clearing up, at least for the moment. A final one ran towards Coach, only to be knocked off its feet by Coach with his shotgun.

"This used to be a nice neighborhood!" he growled at the zombie, just a mere second before he blew its brains with his gun.

We all caught our breath while standing in the file of fresh—er, fresh _ish_ —zombie corpses.

"If we see a Jimmy Gibbs zombie," Coach panted, glancing over at the rest of us, "someone else is gonna have to kill it."

"No way," I said.

"Uh-uh," Ellis replied.

Nick and Rochelle didn't seem to mind, though. It stung a little bit, but I knew it was for the better. There was no way in hell that I was puttin' a bullet through Mr. Jimmy Gibbs Junior, and honestly, I didn't think any Georgian would be willing to either.

Deep in the mall, we heard another growl nearly identical to the one we'd heard moments before the first horde had begun.

"Find a gas can!" Ellis screamed over it, and we all bolted in search.

Nick and Rochelle ran up the closest set of stairs, and I followed after them with Ellis trailing behind only a few paces. We arrived just in time to see one of the spitting ones scratching at Nick, and Ellis easily shot it down with his pistols.

We looked at its corpse, with its saggy tits and dribbling, glowing saliva acid. Ellis chuckled. "That is _one_ nasty ass zombie."

"So that's a Spitter, huh?" Nick asked, the cheeky grin he got whenever he was pulling somebody's leg around back on his face. "Think she's single?"

We all groaned, a little disgusted, save for Nick who looked mighty pleased with himself.

They set off to go fill up the car with the gas they'd found while Ellis and I carried on. We walked until we found not one, but two gas cans propped up against each other hidden behind a couple construction sheets. Pleased with our find, we each grabbed one and shot back down the steps to the car.

Rochelle was just finishing up pouring in the can she and Nick had obtained as we approached, and they set off to go find some more. Ellis started pouring the one he carried, and I set mine down by his feet so that I could cover him in case any zombies decided to get smart.

"I can't wait to get behind the wheel of _you_ , darlin'," I heard him whisper gently to the car, and I couldn't help but chuckle real quietly at that so he wouldn't think I was teasing him.

He poured in the second one and turned back to the general direction of the group. "We still need more gas!" he screamed, before grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me off to go find more gas.

"I got this one!" I heard Coach respond from somewhere on the third floor. Suddenly, something launched from just about where I'd heard his voice and landed right in Nick's arms. A gas can. He looked awful confused, before shrugging and just setting off to go fill up the car some more.

Ellis and I began heading for the stairs when we heard Coach scream. We hauled ass and finally saw him wrapped up in one of the smoking dude's tongues, the sonofabitch zombie standing on the landing of the steps right by the walkway where Coach was all tied up.

I pulled up the rifle and peered through the scope, settling on the zombie's ugly head and trying to pretend it was a target before I pulled the trigger. It burst in a big poof of smoke, and Coach was freed.

"Thanks, Casey!" he called down, stumbling a little as he set a hand on the glass railing to regain his balance when the blasted thing shattered and suddenly Coach was hanging on for dear life.

"Hey y'all, I need some help!" he screamed, but Ellis was already running up the stairs while I took charge of shooting down the zombies who'd gotten wind of the situation at hand.

Coach's grip was slipping. "God dammit!" I heard him cuss, even from all the way on the first floor, "I knew I should've lost some weight! HELP ME UP ALREADY!"

Fortunately, Ellis and Rochelle had both just about reached him, and together they pulled Coach up from the ledge. I took advantage of the lack of zombies and climbed up the stairs, Rochelle watching for any that might sneak up on me from up on the walkway.

Just as I jogged up behind them, a figure dressed in a white race suit emerged from one of the destroyed doors. He stumbled and stood, and we got a clean look at his face. Ellis, Coach, and I gasped at the exact same time.

"Shit," Coach mumbled.

"Check it out man, that's Jimmy Gibbs Jr.," Ellis muttered, his voice muted and hollow. I couldn't do much but just stare, feeling as my heart shattered.

Jimmy took a couple of odd, jerky steps towards us, his glowing eyes focusing on us. What remained of his mouth pulled down into an unhappy frown.

Rochelle put her gun up, but Ellis immediately pushed it down and away from Mr. Gibbs. He approached him slowly, aiming his pistol… and didn't fire.

It took exactly that long for Jimmy Gibbs to catch onto the fact that Ellis wasn't another zombie, and he went wild. He charged towards him, only to be shoved back by Ellis right as he was within biting distance. He stumbled backwards and steadied himself and started charging again, but Ellis just shoved him backwards again. And again. And again. And again.

He couldn't do it. So when Nick strolled up and pushed Ellis outta the way and silenced Jimmy Gibbs Jr. with his axe, nobody said anything save for Ellis, who protested like a little kid. It was more than him, though, and he had to look away when Nick did the deed. He retreated to me and wrapped his arms around me, giving me a long, tight hug. I rubbed his back gently, knowing it was one of those moments where you just don't gotta say anything.

"That wasn't cool, Nick," I whispered to him, but I did my best to look grateful. He didn't answer or anything, just gave me a weird smile and shrugged, doing his strange little Nick chuckle.

There wasn't a whole lot of time to grieve the loss of Jimmy Gibbs Jr., 'cause almost immediately after that, we heard another of those bone-chilling growls signifying we were in for another round of zombies trying to eat us. So we picked up our weapons, dusted ourselves off, and headed off to find more gas cans.

Just heading off to the car we found two more, and Ellis poured it in while Rochelle, Coach, and I shot at the oncoming zombies. Nick had run off elsewhere to find another gas can in the meantime.

"Man, I feel like I'm gassin' up royalty," Ellis mumbled to himself before Nick ran up and pushed him outta the way to pour in the can that he'd found.

He was frustrated, you could tell that much from just looking at him. "How big is the tank on this thing?!" Nick demanded, slashing at an unfortunate zombie's head with his axe one he'd emptied the can into the tank.

"One more could do it!" Ellis hollered back, excited.

"Let's try to stay together," Rochelle urged, and just as I looked at her I saw another one of those Hunters crawling on all fours over to her, thinking he was slick. I tried opening my mouth to say something, but before any of the four of us could warn her, the thing had already leaped.

It wasn't that big of a deal, though. It was as if Rochelle sensed it, and she wheeled around and took it down in a single headshot.

We stared in awe.

"Damn," Nick mumbled, for the first time in his life at a loss for words, "Rochelle!"

She smiled and laugh a little, and I could tell she was proud of herself for that one. I mean, honestly, who wouldn't be? Shoot, if I were her, I'd be bragging about that one into next week.

"Let's get moving!" Coach reminded, grabbing his gun and leading the way up to find the last gas can that we needed. We all followed this time. No point in heading off in different directions, plus I was pretty sure no one wanted to risk getting caught up by something while by their lonesome, either.

We headed to a balcony we hadn't checked out before, heading to what appeared to be the only door in the atrium that hadn't been broken down by a horde of zombies trying to get at us. Coach led the group, as he usually did, but he stopped. We all did when he did and realized why pretty quick. Something was gurgling from behind the door.

"What the hell is _that_?" Ellis wondered aloud.

We listened for another moment. "No idea… but I don't think it's friendly," Rochelle replied slowly.

"Alright, we haven't heard _anything_ like that throughout this whole mess, and that's _not_ a happy noise," I added, shifting uncomfortable. I wasn't in the mood to meet some new zombie type, and I didn't think any of the others were, either.

The gurgling was getting louder. "Maybe if we don't move, it won't see us," Nick whispered.

It was a pretty dumb idea, but we tested it out for a couple seconds anyway. I guess we really angered whatever was behind the door, though, 'cause it got real pissed and let out the loudest grunt of fury I've ever heard in my whole life.

"Shit!" Coach cussed.

The ground started shaking just a little bit. "Oh, this ain't good!" Ellis screamed.

And a little bit more, while the zombie screamed. "Okay, that's reason to panic!" Nick pointed out for us.

The ground began to rumble like crazy, and I reached out to Ellis to keep my balance.

"Man, this is about to get all Baghdad and shit…!" Coach hollered.

The zombie destroyed the door in a single blow, sending pieces of it flying out towards us. "Look out!" Coach cried, and I just barely managed to dodge out of the way as Ellis pulled me by the hand. But there was no time to thank him. There, in the doorway, stood what can only be accurately described as the biggest fucking zombie ever created. Big and pink, and beating on its chest with its two giant gorilla fists.

"Holy shit… what is that?!" Coach shouted, pretty much summing up everybody's mindset at that moment.

"Holy shit, big freaking zombie!" Nick bellowed.

"We gotta fight that thing?!" Rochelle shrieked.

"Are guns even gonna work against that thing?!" Ellis asked at the same time.

"Don't think, just shoot!" I screamed back at all of them, training my rifle on the thing and pulling the trigger. We all began shooting at it, though it didn't seem to make a difference. I think we all figured that out when Nick threw his axe at it and nailed it in the right pectoral, and the zombie just pinched the axe off himself and threw it halfway to Sunday.

"Assclown!" Nick hollered in frustration.

"Haul ass!" Coach instructed, and we all scrambled, just as the zombie became enraged and decided to start hounding after us.

The ground jittered with each thundering step it took. "We're gonna have to focus on that thing!" Coach screamed back to the rest of us, and we turned and started shooting while running backwards at the super zombie.

We kept running as Ellis stayed back, firing a grenade at it and halting it pretty efficiently. We stopped rushing then, turning back as he shot yet another one of it, but the victory was cut brief when Ellis ran out of grenades. "Goddamn…" I heard him curse before the zombie let out a rambunctious, deafening roar. "Aw, shit!" Ellis cussed before racing off.

"Heeeelp!" he begged as he ran past where we all stood. Quickly, each of us took power, assisting Ellis in pumping the zombie full with bullets. He tore out his two pistols and aimed them both at the zombie.

Out of all of us, Coach was in the best position to shoot bullet after bullet into the thing's back with his shotgun. "Eat that shit!" he taunted.

Big mistake. It only seemed to infuriate the zombie further, who turned and focused his attention on Coach and started lumping after him. Coach barely made it five feet before the zombie swung one of its heavy fists and threw him off the balcony, shattering the railing.

"Oh shit!" Ellis yelled, making the zombie turn back his focus to him. It started chasing after him again, Nick, Rochelle, and I going wild to try and kill it.

We trailed after it all the way to the opposite side of the mall, Rochelle, Ellis and I standing on one side of it while Nick shot it from the other side. Frustrated, the zombie reached into the ground and pulled out an entire literal piece of the floor out, and launched it straight at Nick. It only grazed him, but it was enough to knock him over as if he were nothing more than a bowling pin. "Keep shootin'!" Ellis instructed Rochelle and I, and the zombie turned, coming to end us.

We had to be the luckiest zombie apocalypse survivors ever, because somebody's bullet—I don't know whose—suddenly flew out and nailed the zombie right in it's small, ugly head. It went down in a second as if it were no more harmful than a baby. Across us, I could see Nick was alright. Rubbing his head, but alright.

"Whew, that was _close_ ," Rochelle panted, giving us all a weary look. I rubbed at my eyes, trembling, as Nick walked over to rejoin us and we began heading down the stairs, back to the ground floor.

Halfway down the flight I saw Coach, just finishing pouring a gas can he must've found while we finished off the mass of zombie upstairs. "We're all gassed up!" he announced, turning to look at us. "Get to the car!"

"Car's full, let's go!" Rochelle repeated, and we darted down the steps. Well, they did. Ellis scooped me up gleefully and carried me down the steps, calling a hearty 'let's go' over the distinct roar of approaching zombies.

"I'm drivin'!" he cheered, beaming down at me. "Whoo!"

We shot down the zombies running towards us as Coach yanked open the back door and climbed in, killing any zombies that tried to get into the car with him.

"Run to Jimmy Gibbs Junior!" Ellis screamed just as we reached the car and set me down, jumping over the hood and settling into the driver's seat. I jumped into the passenger seat, pulling the window down to shoot at the incoming zombies as Rochelle and Nick joined Coach in the back, and we all slammed our doors shut.

Lucky for us, some idiot had decided to leave the keys in the car.

"Punch it, Ellis!" Coach yelled proudly, and Ellis grinned back at him before shoving the keys into the ignition and starting the car.

"Here we go folks, buckle up! I aim to see what this car can do!"

He stepped down on the accelerator, and we began zooming towards the exit doors at full speed. "Next stop, New Orleans!" Ellis whooped, and we broke through the glass doors of the mall, headed straight to New Orleans.


	11. Chapter 11

It wasn't a particularly long ride, or at least that's not what it felt like. We were all pretty hungry, so we dipped into the food stock we had salvaged from the mall and conversed about how wild everything was at the moment, and even a little bit about ourselves so that we stopped being a bunch of strangers to each other.

Nick wasn't into the idea at all, so of course, he had to be the first one to talk. He didn't want to say much, but after a lot of prodding and teasing from the four of us we got him to tell us that he was thirty-five years old, an ex-con man, real good at Blackjack, and that he paid $3,000 for his suit. I also learned that he got _cantankerous_ when you asked him what on God's green earth had possessed him into spending $3,000 on a damn suit.

Coach went up next. The first thing he told us was that he'd been a football lineman in college, but after gettin' hurt he couldn't play no more and instead took a teaching job at the local high school teaching health, and coaching the freshmen on the side. He also admitted to us that his real name wasn't actually Coach—it was Darnell, Darnell Coleman. I was a tiny bit relieved to hear that; I imagined it would've been real odd to have a coach whose name was Coach Coach. He was the oldest of us at the wise age of forty-four.

Once Coach had finished up, Ellis was real excited about the whole thing so we let him go next. He told us about anything and everything—he was a mechanic and had his own auto shop with some of his friends, the same ones that he played bass in a band with. Among them were Keith, his best friend in the whole world, and Dave, his other friend who sometimes acted like a tool but was overall a pretty good guy. His full name was Ellis McKinney, and he considered himself to be 'pretty young' at twenty-three. He was real excited to get to New Orleans on account of the fact that his ma and best friend had gotten on the evacuation helicopters—or whirly birds as he called 'em—the moment they got there. He'd decided to hang back and save his truck. It didn't work out too well.

Next up was Rochelle, or Ms. Aytes as she told Nick he could refer to her as from now on. She came from Cleveland, workin' to report about the Savannah evacuation center back when it still existed after everybody working above her got sick with the Green flu. She had been working on it with her boyfriend, but he'd gotten sick the day they were shooting so she was settin' up the cameras when everything—including the boyfriend—went to shit and she bailed outta there. She was twenty-nine.

After that there was nobody else to tip the hat to so I talked about myself for a little while. I started out with my name (Casey Summers), age (twenty-one), and what I was doin' in Georgia (born and raised there but brought back by CEDA from my college in New York). I explained that I was lookin' for my father as well as three friends—Jason, Cameron, and Natalie—in the meantime. I told them about how when the world wasn't zombie infested, I liked headin' out to the beach and watchin' movies and shit.

Sharing time turned out to be a decent way of killing about an hour of our road time, and after that we were all quiet, and before long Nick, Coach, and Rochelle had fallen asleep in the backseat. That just left me and Ellis for a little bit, and we spent another hour talking, but then he got real quiet so we sat in silence for about twenty minutes. I didn't know what to say to break it, but soon enough Coach woke up and insisted Ellis and I get some rest too, so we swapped spots with him and Nick. I didn't think I'd fall asleep, but pretty soon, I was out like a light.

When I woke up I realized I was pretty much lying on top of Ellis, my head on his chest and my right arm thrown around his waist. To my right, Rochelle was in nearly the same position, asleep while leaning on me.

Ellis had woken up a little bit before me, and he grinned at me once he realized I was up but then frowned a little bit and stared out the window instead. I got off him, embarrassed, and shook Rochelle awake once I'd realized we had stopped.

The three of us climbed out of the car and joined up with Coach and Nick in the night as they stared at a raised bridge ahead of us in disbelief. There was something strikingly familiar about the bridge, but being dazed from having just woken up, I couldn't figure out what.

"Aww, lord," Ellis sighed.

I stared down the bridge before looking around us wildly, trying to piece together where we were and I why I felt like I knew the place. "Can just one more goddamn thing go wrong?!" Rochelle complained to my left.

"Bullshit!" Nick cursed.

Coach let out a loud, heavy sigh. "Dear lord…" he mumbled, looking up into the dark sky filled with dark storm clouds, "why did I ever leave Savannah?"

And that's when I put it together.

"We're in Rayford!" I announced all of a sudden, excited. Man, if there was ever a place to be stranded, Rayford was it. I couldn't wait to start lookin' for my old man.

Coach looked to me, nodding as if he was confused. He seemed to remember that this was my hometown real quick, though. "That we are," he agreed. "And it looks like we're gonna be here for a while…" he added, looking to the bridge and frowning.

"Y'know, this reminds me—my buddy Keith and I were once on a bridge _just like this_ , man. Well, kinda, I mean, I was on the bridge and Keith was _sure_ he could jump the river without the bridge, so I raised the bridge, and, well… Did you know cars can float? I mean, for a little while at least…"

My gaze snapped to him immediately. "That was _you?_ " I shot out, thinking back to a big local news story from a couple years ago. There'd been a lot of talk about it, and I could still remember when one of the bar regulars told me and my daddy while laughing hysterically, about the two idiots who'd sunk a car in the river.

Ellis grinned sheepishly back at me and rubbed the back of his neck, nodding, before looking away real quickly and making a weird face I didn't understand. I shrugged it off, though—I'd long ago realized that men could be real strange.

Coach wasn't quite as amused. He shook his head, looking to Ellis. "Boy, you are wearin' me out."

Our chatter was interrupted by a voice none of us knew from the top of the bridge.

"Hello down there!"

Up at the bridge, on a railed ledge, stood a girl with dark hair tied back and a pink jacket, waving at us like wild.

We all let out a collective group sigh of relief at the exact same moment. "Hey," Coach screamed back at her, "hello there. You wanna let the bridge down for us?" he asked, and we all looked back to the girl, hopeful.

The next two words outta her mouth broke my heart, and I didn't know if I wanted to cry or climb up there and fight. "Sorry, can't," she replied, shaking her head. "We got wounded up here. Nice car, though."

I slumped a little, disappointed. How the hell was I supposed to go and find my father and take him back to New Orleans with me if the only way out of Rayford was up thirty feet in the air? Damn builders, decidin' to build a damn bridge that up and raised itself.

The four of us waited for Ellis to answer about the car, but he remained in silence. When I looked to him, he looked like he was deep in thought, thinking about something real hard. It made all of us feel a little bit uneasy. It wasn't like Ellis to be quiet for too long.

"Ellis… are you gonna answer her?" Rochelle questioned, nudging him lightly. But he didn't answer.

Coach stepped forward, raising his eyebrows. " _Ellis_ ," he insisted.

"Hey, Cletus!" Nick snapped.

"Hey, hee-haw!" Rochelle added.

"Oh, stop it," I snapped at both of them, shooting each of them an equally irritated glare for teasing him.

Still, Ellis said nothing and instead turned back to face me. He gave me another weird look, this time dead in the eyes, and kinda let out a sigh before turning back around and being quiet for a couple more seconds.

"Well, hello!" he called up and then seemed to reconsider. He let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "Hello," he said in a voice that by my guess was an attempt at sounding a little bit smoother. Still, it didn't sound quite right to him. "H-Howdy, uh… beautiful weather, huh?"

She glanced up, and even from way down on the street I could tell she was confused. Made enough sense; there were storm clouds lining the skies thicker than bear fur. And trust me; bear fur is _real_ thick.

Ellis rubbed the back of his neck, clearly getting increasingly distressed by the second. "We're havin' a uh…" he trailed off before sighing and looking at the ground, mumbling to himself. The only part I caught was 'one of you better do this'.

It did not strike a good chord with me.

"You've been killin' zombies for the better part of two days, boy, you can talk to a girl," Coach commanded, patting him on the back, his voice serious.

But Ellis just shook his head. "No, I can't," he insisted. " _Look_ at her."

Alright, that _really_ didn't strike a good chord with me at all. I couldn't help but to feel a pang of jealousy, and suddenly I didn't feel too warmly towards the girl on the ledge anymore.

Etiquette and good manners won, though, and I pushed the feeling away and stepped up from the car to get a look at her. "Can you bring the bridge down?" I asked. "We gotta get across the river so we can head to New Orleans."

"Sorry, I can't lower the bridge!" she insisted. I took a sharp intake of breath, glancing at all of the others, frustrated. Now, it bothered me enough that Ellis was actin' all strange towards this girl, but if there was one thing I wouldn't stand for it was an outsider tellin' me she wouldn't raise the bridge of _my_ hometown for me to get across.

To my surprise, I found solace by lookin' at Nick, begging him to help me out with my eyes. He looked back at me, equally pissed as if agreeing with me. At least I wasn't the only one in a shitty mood.

Ellis kept trying to talk. "Do we, uh… we need to know some sort of… a password or somethin'?"

Everyone shot him a confused look. "Uh… no…? The generator is out of gas," the girl explained. "If you get over to the other side and fill it up, we can cover you," she suggested. Alright, that made enough sense; that damn generator sucked up gas like a vacuum. I was still feeling a little bit sour, but her saying that eased me out a little bit.

The same couldn't be said for Nick. He stepped up, completely fed up with her by that point. "That's terrific, cupcake," he called up, his voice venomous, "look, is there a man up there that maybe we can talk to?"

That pissed her off real well, and I couldn't blame her. When Nick wanted to push buttons, he knew exactly which to press. "Oh, I don't know what to do!" she squealed back, her voice higher than a second ago. "Go to Hell, Colonel Sanders," she spat, her voice cold.

Heh. Colonel Sanders.

Nick scoffed, irritated. "Hey, lighten up!" he commanded. "Man, nobody can take a joke anymore," he mumbled under his breath, causing Rochelle to facepalm and shake her head real slowly.

"Oh Nick," she muttered, "charming is _not_ a word I'd use to describe you…"

Nick only had a split second to glare at her for saying that, before we were all distracted by yet another new voice coming from where the girl was standing. "You down there!"

We looked up to see some biker type of dude whose arms were full of tattoos looking down at us. It reminded me of Jason. "Be calm!" he instructed. "We're cops!"

"Y'all ain't cops!" I called back automatically. My father had spent years in the police academy before he traded in the badge for barstools. I could tell who was a cop and who wasn't just fine.

"What?" Nick asked, equally as incredulous as I was.

Coach shook his head, letting out a real loud sigh as if he was just about done with this bullshit. "Tell me this boy ain't for real," he mumbled.

"You guys aren't cops," Nick agreed with me, furrowing his eyebrows.

But the biker only shook his head, turning to eye Nick and myself seriously. "No, no, no…" he replied, his voice patronizing. "I _am_ a cop." Behind him, the girl nodded.

"Are any of you vampires?" Biker asked.

I was already growing impatient as time went by, seeing as every minute wasted on trying to reason with these people was another minute lost that I could've spent headin' down to the bar and finding my old man. But I held my tongue, mainly for the others' sake as they'd want to get going soon. That question, though… that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Taking a deep breath I looked to Coach and nudged him, not trusting myself to open my mouth and answer without sassing off and pissing them off enough for them to decide we weren't worth helping. He looked back at me and shook his head, aggravated.

"Tell me this boy ain't for real," he repeated to me before glancing back to the biker and the girl. "Yes, we are vampires," he said in monotone, rolling his eyes.

Rochelle nodded at that. "All of us are vampires," she agreed.

The biker grinned and turned back, saying something that none of us heard to somebody none of us could see. I could hear another voice, just barely, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. It sounded a teensy bit like an argument.

"Can we talk to that other guy?" Rochelle requested, slumping a little bit. I could tell she was weary at this point.

The biker looked back at us surprised as if he'd forgotten we were there, before breaking out into an angry frown. "I'm not talking to any goddamn vampires," he shot back. I shut my eyes and took a deep, frustrated breath.

It was Ellis who spoke first. "Oh man, I know!" he piped up all of a sudden, and I could tell he'd come up with something that could help us just from the way his eyes were sparkling, just like they had in the elevator when he thought of the car idea. "That's what I've been sayin'! If there are zombies, there has _got_ to be vampires, wolfmen, mummies, aliens… _all_ that shit, man, it just makes sense!"

Biker was real pleased with that. "Yeah!" he agreed, before turning to the girl still pointing at Ellis. "That's what I've been saying."

Ellis chuckled and grinned back, nodding his head enthusiastically. "So… you go ahead and lower that bridge for us then?"

"Nope. No way in Hell."

God _damn_ it.

"Listen to me, jackass!" Nick screamed up, bursting before any one of us had a chance to. "Lower the goddamn bridge so we can drive our goddamn car across!"

But the two just shook their heads. "Is there any one of you five who _isn't_ an asshole?" Biker asked.

Nick wasn't having any of it. "I'm telling you for the last _goddamn time_ —lower the _goddamn_ bridge! You greasy, vest-wearing _monkey!_ "

"Go to Hell, suit," Biker snapped.

In that moment, I guess Rochelle had had just about enough. "Hey, boys!" she interrupted. "Okay. If we get to the other side, can you help us lower it?"

Biker smiled at her, leaning on the railing as if he really liked that idea. "Hell yeah!" he agreed, grinning. "I'll help _you!_ "

Rochelle grinned smugly, looking over at Nick. "See Nick? You should try being nice sometime," she said, before turning her attention back to the two on the ledge. "Thank you very much!" she called up.

Coach let out a long sigh, eyeing each of us before looking back to the two. "Y'all can't climb down there and save us a trip?" he proposed.

But the girl just shook her head again. "Sorry, can't," she replied. "...We lost a guy, and… another's injured… if you can find another way over, we can help you get the bridge down."

I reached up and rubbed my eyes, smudging even further the already ruined eyeliner that sat on my face. The exhaustion of running around shooting guns was getting to me. "You know it's gonna be bad if they wouldn't risk it," Rochelle mumbled to us.

"Okay, well… I guess we'll take it…" Ellis called to them, shrugging. "See ya." He headed to the car's trunk to get our weapons.

"Ten-four!" Biker replied, saluting us.

They headed off, and my group made our way over to the trunk of the car to retrieve our weapons, backups, and health packs.

"Should I… maybe stay here and guard the car?" Ellis suggested, glancing back. I felt another pang of jealousy at that, and I tried to push it away. Not the best time to worry about jealousy and a boy's attention during a zombie apocalypse, I rationalized.

Nick sauntered by, rolling his eyes. "Nope," he replied dryly. I looked to Ellis, but he avoided my gaze entirely as I passed by him. He walked behind me instead of beside me.

We grouped up again a little ways down the road, enough to be out of earshot of the people on the ledge. "Do we have to team up with these assholes?" Nick demanded as we formed a small circle. "Can't we just drive around?"

I shook my head. "Road cuts out about halfway there," I explained. "They were redoin' one of the main roads 'cause it was too full of potholes and such. So bad that no cars could drive on it anyway. They dug it up maybe a week before the outbreak, and then it got flooded with that storm a couple weeks back. Walkin'll be the only way."

Nick groaned in frustration, but Coach stared at me as if in deep thought. "Sounds like you know the way, Casey," he observed. "How about you take the lead for once?"

I smiled back at him and nodded, a little excited about leadin' the group. We formed back into a line, this time with me walkin' up front alongside Coach. The other plus to all of this was if I wasn't walking right by Ellis, I could forget about crushes and jealousy and just focus on the things that really mattered. Finding my dad, and staying alive long enough to do it.

The traffic on the main road was bad, so bad that there wasn't any point in trying to walk down it. "We're gonna have to cut through the park a little bit," I called back, and we jumped down into it. We had to be careful; the light rain was makin' the bricks a little bit slippery.

"Ellis, I really think the car's gonna be okay on its own," I heard Rochelle say further down the line.

We trekked through the park, keeping our eyes peeled for any zombies wandering around in the rain. I was anxious this time, though; I knew the locals in Rayford pretty well, so seeing them in zombified versions wasn't something I was exactly looking forward to, and I was _especially_ not looking forward to having to put a bullet in them.

"I'll tell you something, that guy is no cop," Nick muttered from behind Coach and me, and I rolled my eyes. That much was _real_ obvious.

"And you were a con-man?" Rochelle shot back, skepticism in her voice. "I can't _believe_ you used to be a con artist."

I would've jumped into their argument, but I was absorbed in keeping my wits about me. I knew I had to make sure I saw any oncoming zombies, but at the same time, I wanted to look at anything but. The unspeakable thought that I'd see my father among the walking dead terrified me to no end.

The main road cleared up a bit further down, so we climbed back up to it and found ourselves looking at the shops. Surprisingly enough, the power was still on in almost all of them. Maybe that was a good sign.

"This way," I murmured, nodding to Coach. We continued on.

"I ever tell you about the time me and Keith filled up water balloons with our own—"

We didn't get to hear exactly what Ellis and Keith had put into the water balloons, as Nick interrupted Ellis before he could say much of anything else with a stern 'Ellis… is now the best time?'.

"Through this store," I instructed.

I was halted by a hand gripping my elbow. "Hold on," Nick replied. "I'm gonna go back and shoot that jackass."

Ellis stared back at him, stunned. "Naw, man, he seemed like a good guy."

"Besides, we don't have time for that," I pointed out.

Rochelle let out a loud sigh. "After spending all that time in the car with _you guys_ , it's nice to hear some new voices," she said.

I thought back to one particular point in the car ride in which Nick and Coach had started arguin' over Nick teasing Coach's love of food that got so bad that they stopped the car and woke Rochelle to try and get her to switch seats with one of them. It only led to a fifteen-minute long argument, and by the end, both men had had to make up and just deal with it.

We headed on up to the upstairs area, home to the shop owners and a couple of extra offices from which the managers used. It was Coach's ideas to search these rooms, and everybody else was on board. I didn't argue.

It was a good call that we did. Nick popped open a trunk where we found ammo, another one of those puke jars, and a spare shotgun that Ellis claimed on account that he'd lost his grenade launcher at the mall while tryin' to take down the zombie we'd started calling a tank after tuning into a broadcast from New Orleans advising caution from tanks. We figured they must've meant the big pink ones. We continued on and passed through a bar room that reminded me too much of my dad's bar. I led them outta there pretty fast and we wound up exiting to a back alley.

Five steps into the alley and we heard that coughing that came from the smoking assholes. The aptly named Smokers. We stopped and looked around, but nobody could find it. We walked a little faster after that.

"Sounds like one of them Smoker bitches," Coach grunted.

"Hey Rochelle," I heard Ellis mumble, and I listened in despite what I'd told myself. "And don't spare my feelin's none. You think I got _any_ shot with that girl?"

I whipped around that second, making the group come to an abrupt stop and causing Nick to nearly crash into me, but I ignored his angry glare and looked straight to Ellis.

"I don't think you should be worryin' about impressin' some girl who let us go on this suicide mission at night, in the rain, durin' a zombie apocalypse," I scolded, my voice serious and cold. He stared back at me, absolutely speechless. In fact, they all looked at me pretty surprised. Uncomfortable and jealous as all Hell, I turned back around and kept walking.

Soft footsteps signaled to me that they kept following. I heard Rochelle answer in a real soft voice, so soft I barely heard her. "Ellis, ask yourself, what would Keith do?"

Coach turned back to face her. "Girl, what are you _doin'?_ " he asked.

The awkwardness from a couple moments ago had faded and Ellis replied enthusiastically. "Man, that reminds me of this—"

Rochelle groaned before he could get any further on with his story. "I wasn't thinking!"

Coach stopped, letting out a long sigh. I stopped walking too, looking to him, confused. "Look," he said to Ellis, "if you let your guard down for one minute, we _all_ pay the price." He finished it off by looking to each of us individually, a serious look on his face. I nodded.

"Lead the way, Casey," he said.

"This way," I replied quietly.

We headed towards the nearby apartment complex, a place I'd frequented often and had even lived in the first five years of my life. "Into the apartments," Nick announced.

Just as he finished saying that, a clear growl swept through the night as if somebody were strangling a pig. I looked to Ellis on reflex to see him reaching his hand out towards me, his eyes wide and fearful. But the sound stopped and we heard footsteps away from us, so I looked away from him.

"Let's search these rooms," Rochelle suggested, and we piled into the apartment real quick and shut the door on the rain, and took a moment to shake ourselves off.

I screamed the second I saw what was inside. Standing in front of me was no stranger—one of my daddy's oldest friends, from back when he was on the police force and not a bartender, owned this apartment with his wife. I'd grown up knowing them as Uncle Garrett and Aunt Cole, but at that moment, all I saw left of them was two zombies.

They didn't stand a chance against Nick's pistols. He shot them both down before they could move two steps, and turned to give me an odd look.

"I'm sorry, I…" I tried to say, but I couldn't get much out. Lookin' at the two of them made me want to cry, and it suddenly felt far too hot and stuffy in the apartment.

I felt somebody shift and I saw Ellis had moved towards me, but Rochelle had beaten him to the punch and stood beside me with her hand on my shoulder. "Did you know them, Casey?" she asked softly.

Swallowing down a sob I nodded, looking away. "Y'all can search the apartment," I replied, struggling to keep my voice cool and collected like how Nick and Coach's always sounded, "there's a second floor to this complex. Somebody should probably go and check it out."

Before anybody could protest or question my sanity, I shot outta that room as if it were on fire and climbed up the stairs two at a time, desperate to get up to get some air. There were piles and piles of corpses on the floor, but I didn't stop once to get a look at their faces. Instead, I headed into a big room where they'd been doin' some construction and leaned up against one of the metal support beams they'd set up, taking a second to lay down my rifle and just breathe.

Garrett and Colette Warren were some of the toughest people I knew. Garrett had breezed by the police academy without a sweat even at the times even my own daddy had struggled, as he was used to the demanding parts of training after spending a couple years in the military. His wife, Colette, not only made the meanest pot roast in the whole damn town but was also ten times tougher than he was. She was one of the police academy _instructors_ , and she managed to put even Garrett through the wringer on occasion.

Now, my daddy was no weakling, but he wasn't quite as tough as either Garrett or Colette. Yeah, he'd done his fair share as a cop, but the fact was that he'd left 'cause he wanted to slow down and be able to enjoy his jelly doughnuts and french pastries without worryin' about keepin' fast so as to catch any runners. He wasn't at the fittest point in his life. If Garrett and Cole hadn't made it, I was a real shithead for thinkin' my daddy would stand any more of a chance.

"Hey."

I looked up, a tiny bit surprised to see Ellis standing barely two feet away from me. I shifted away, self-conscious about the tears that had formed in my eyes. "Hey," I said quietly.

He edged a little closer, keeping his eyes locked on me as if he were testing the waters. "I'm real sorry you had to see that," he sighed finally.

"It's different when it's someone you know," I confessed, trying to get the blasted image out of my head. "Then it's like, everything's suddenly so _real_. We're not just runnin' 'round tryin' to find the government, suddenly it's like… we're really just all alone, hoping everybody we care about is okay when chances are they just _ain't_."

With that, I was pushed over the edge and in a blink of an eye, I was standing there in front of Ellis bawling like a damn baby.

"Aw, c'mon," he urged, wrapping his strong arms around me and hugging me real close into his chest, "don't cry, Case. I'm sure your old man's just fine if he's even a lick like you. Don't cry, darlin'."

But I kept crying, and then I remembered that even though his arms were around me he still had a big ol' crush on that other girl, and though there wasn't any real logical reason to cry over the affections of a boy you'd just met two days ago it still made me feel rotten so I just cried even harder.

Fortunately, it didn't last too long, and soon enough the tears dried up and I was left wipin' at my face. His shirt was all stained with tear marks and the remnants of the last stubborn bits of eyeliner that had persisted on my face this long even after the majority had gotten wiped off, but he didn't seem to mind.

"There's my girl," he smiled, leaning down a little and wiping a stray tear from my cheek with his

I gave him a teensy smile back before a figure at the exit door caught my eye. I looked to it and saw a zombie that was heavily armored and carrying, of all things, a health pack.

Ellis looked too, and his reaction was instant. "Hey, stop that zombie!" he screamed, and it ran off. He tore off after it.

A second later, I heard a dull _clunk_ as if Ellis had thrown his crowbar at it, followed by a wet smushing sound. Right after, I heard Ellis scream bloody murder.

"Ellis!" I shrieked, and shot out of the room.

I ran down the path to find Ellis hanging over the edge of the apartment building,a Smoker standing at the roof with his tongue wrapped around and choking Ellis.

"Smoker's got me!" Ellis managed to cough out as he struggled against the Smoker's tongue.

"I'm comin'!" I cried as I ran closer to get a clearer shot, but Ellis was unable to reply as the Smoker constricted its muscular tongue around him, choking the breath out of him even further. Terrified by the sounds Ellis was making as he struggled to breathe, I raised my rifle, got the Smoker right on the cross of the scope, and shot it dead.

Ellis fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and I made my way over to help him up. He stood, stumbling a little as if he were drunk, before raising the health pack and giving me a big grin.

The others joined us outside, and by the looks of it, they were clearly not happy. If anything, Coach was _fuming_. I could see steam coming out of that man's ears. Last time I'd seen that was when I was sixteen years old and had put a dent in my daddy's brand new Jeep.

"Ellis! What did I tell you about runnin' off?!" he demanded.

Ellis stared back at a loss for words, but I stepped up. "We were chasin' after a zombie, Coach," I explained, "ain't his fault the Smoker got him. He just wanted to get a health pack the zombie had."

Coach raised an eyebrow to me, but I could tell he trusted in my word. He shot one final, unsure look at Ellis before nodding.

"Alright, Casey. Lead the way."

I nodded back and ignored Ellis' smile, instead focusing on the path ahead of us. I'd gotten a little overwhelmed at seeing Garrett and Colette turned, but I knew I had to keep business if I was gonna find my old man.

"Into the park," I instructed.

We trekked slowly into the Rayford park, the grass damp and muddy as a result of the thunderstorm. We crept around an infected woman dressed up in a real fancy dress, but she noticed us at the last moment. Luckily for us, Rochelle smacked her down with her paddle and shut her up before she even had a chance to complain.

Up ahead I could hear a distorted version of the Wedding March, and I just knew we was walking into something _real_ bad. Last I'd spoken to my dad, he was goin' on and on about how dumb the 'once great folk of Rayford' had gotten and most of all how Becky Jonas, a local woman who was always blamin' my old man for the drunks in town, was havin' her shotgun wedding in the park despite the Green flu outbreak. The only comfort I had in any of this was that given that she didn't like my daddy, he wasn't invited and probably wouldn't be there, even if he had been.

As we got closer to the central wooden gazebo, we could hear a woman weeping.

"Sounds like a witch," Nick mumbled, and I shuddered. I did _not_ wanna see another one of them. I needed another witch encounter like I needed a nail in the eye.

"Careful," Rochelle warned.

Sure enough, the gazebo was set up for the perfect Rayford wedding, and right in the center of all of it was a bride sobbing her eyes out. Even if I hadn't known Becky was the bride, I would've ben able to tell by the platinum blonde hair. We didn't have many platinum blondes in Rayford.

"Holy shit, a _wedding!_ " Nick exclaimed, eyes wide, voice full of surprise.

Rochelle chuckled, her eyes equally wide and focused on the bride-witch that up until prior notice had been known as Rebecca Louise Jonas. "Something old, something new, something about to rip your guts out…" she mumbled morbidly, getting a laugh outta Nick.

"Damn…" Coach muttered, "this here wedding didn't end well."

I blew a strand of my dark hair outta my face. "Do they ever?" Rochelle and I asked at the exact same moment.

Nick rubbed his face with his hands, shaking his head. "Oh Christ," he muttered, "this is more depressing than the zombies."

I nodded, choosing not to mention the fact that I knew that this poor woman was with child. Nobody needed to get even more bad news this week than they'd already had, I figured.

"Aw man," Ellis whispered, "d'you think she's crying 'cause she got left at the altar?"

"Well, this isn't the worst wedding I've ever attended," Rochelle replied before Coach shushed everybody real loudly, a stern look on his face.

"Does anybody see the wedding cake?" he whispered urgently. Nick and I rolled our eyes. I was becoming alarmed at how easily I was beginning to understand Nick.

Ellis chuckled. "Coach, no time for cake," he replied lightly.

I laughed, patting a clearly distraught Coach on the shoulder. "Don't you worry, Coach. Once we're outta this mess I'll bake you a big ol' chocolate cake, just for you."

Coach grinned back at me, and we had a real sweet moment of grinning at each other before Ellis interrupted it by piping up.

"Y'know what?" he asked suddenly, determination filling his eyes. "This got me thinkin'... I should totally marry that girl."

And just like that any thawing I'd gone through earlier in the apartments was gone, and I was back to feeling icy over Ellis again.

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard you say all day," I muttered bitterly, narrowing my eyes as I stared off at the witch. I didn't check to see if anybody was giving me any weird looks. I didn't care if they were.

"Marrying her is the _last_ thing you should do," Nick added, turning to glare at Ellis and earning a confused 'what' in reply.

They broke out into an argument, and I could hear the witch start growling real angry. She began to stand, moving her hands away from her face and focusing her glowing red eyes on Nick and Ellis.

" _Would you guys shut up?!"_ Rochelle hissed, elbowing Nick in the ribs sharply. Up at the gazebo, I saw Becky relax and return to her previous position of sitting and sobbing. We let out a collective sigh of relief as the dust settled a little bit.

When everyone was relaxed again, Nick thought it alright to speak again. "Wedding music and a crying woman left at the altar. This is bringing back some _bad_ memories," he mumbled.

"Nick… you scare me." Rochelle answered. I laughed a little bit, more nervous than amused.

"Rest your ass for a sec," Coach commanded.

None of us had noticed that Ellis had wandered off until all of a sudden the Wedding March ceased and the park was instead filled with the sound of the Midnight Riders' newest song, _Save Me Some Sugar_. He'd leaned on the stereo and accidentally switched the song.

"Aw shit!" he screamed.

"Ellis, what did you just do?!" Nick called back, furious.

"No! No, thank you!" Ellis yelled at nobody in particular, frantically hitting every button on the stereo in an attempt at shutting it off but only turning the bass up so high that the ground shook.

Meanwhile back at the gazebo, Becky was getting _mighty_ pissed. She was standing and screeching, her arms spread out as if ready to shred Ellis with her sharp fingers. She let out one climactic scream and shot off after him, screeching hysterically as she ran.

Ellis bolted off instantly, running away from her. "Oh man, I changed my mind! I do _not_ wanna get married!" he screamed as he ran past us.

Lucky enough for him, Coach intercepted and shot the witch with his shotgun, knocking her flat on the ground. He smiled, proud of himself, as Nick went over to make sure she was really dead and not just pretending to get the best of us.

She wasn't, and she raised her head up, teeth bared as Nick stood over her.

"Honeymoon's over, bitch," Nick spat, and shot her right in the forehead with his pistol. I gotta admit, sure Nick was a stick in the mud, but it had been badass as _Hell_.

Ellis rejoined the group, breathing heavily. But the moment of serenity was cut brief, and a howl let us know that a horde was aware of our location and was headed straight for us.

"They're comin'!" Ellis warned, and I pulled my katana up to start slashing at the oncoming masses, focusing on anything but their faces, as the others fired their pistols and shotguns or—in Rochelle and Ellis' cases—smacked with their paddles and crowbars.

In the midst of all of the chaos, we heard the same pig-like squeal from earlier again, and all of a sudden a zombie with one huge arm bowled through us and launched me to the ground. Its' eyes were only set for Coach, though, and it singled him out. With it's' one colossal arm, it took grasp of Coach and began smashing him into the ground.

"CHARGER GOT ME!" Coach screamed as Nick strode right up to it and started shooting into its big, green back. He helped Coach up and I stood, making my way over to them as a Boomer snuck up on Nick. But Nick was just too good and shot it without so much as a glance.

I retrieved Coach's shotgun and held it out to him, rubbing my back from where I'd hit the ground.

"Now that's a shotgun wedding," Coach joked as he accepted it.

"That's a good one, Coach," Nick laughed.

We looked to Becky, and I shifted uncomfortably. "That's a waste of a good dress," Rochelle mumbled, eyeing the dress that Becky wore longingly, before sighing. "Well, let's just get out of here."

I nodded, more than ready to leave. We left the gazebo as fast as we could go.

"There's got to be a cake around here somewhere," Coach muttered under his breath as we approached some baby-blue colored tents.

"Check the tents," Rochelle commanded, ignoring Coach.

We followed after her and found most of them empty save for one that had an assortment of weapons that by the weight of them, had a lot more ammo than ours did. Relieved, I swapped my rifle for a fully loaded one and got Nick to add the laser sight to it.

"They even have _guns_ at weddings?" Rochelle murmured.

"And no cake," Coach seconded.

"Check the tents," Rochelle instructed, ignoring Coach.

Once we were all equipped with freshly loaded weapons and healed up a little bit, we left the park and exited out onto an empty street.

"Safe room back here!" Coach announced as soon as we got a glimpse of the familiar red door. I could've cried from joy; the rain was soaking through my clothes, and I was cold.

From the back of the line, Ellis laughed joyfully. "Okay, as far as weddin's go, that was the _most_ excitin'!"

"Heh," Coach replied, smiling faintly, "yeah. That shit was creepin' me out."

We made our ways up the steps to the safe room and piled in, relishing in the warm air and adequate lighting. Nick pulled the door shut, before grinning at each of us.

"I'm startin' to like you guys!"


	12. Chapter 12

We took a breather in the safe room to my dismay. I wanted to get a move on and keep goin' forward—we were real close to the bar. But the others were tired, and I didn't have the heart to whine as I saw their exhausted, beaten faces.

I sat on a table next to the exit door of the saferoom, my leg pulled up close to me as I wrapped it in fresh bandages. The old ones that Coach had helped me do in the mall had since soaked through, but at least the water had helped the pain considerably. Every few seconds, I glanced out the exit room door.

To my left sat Nick, desperately rubbing his hands together and breathing on them in an attempt to try and generate some warmth. It was a chilly night, and the rain wasn't doing much to help. In the meantime, Ellis was looking through the scope of a sniper rifle he had found and aimed it out the slits in the door, grinning at anybody who cared to look at him.

"I'll be a sniper, like in the movies," he said to me, winking. Coach shook his head in disapproval from the desk he sat on, looking at Ellis like my teachers would look at me back in high school when I walked in late with coffee.

I pulled my jacket tight around my shoulders, shivering in the small room. More than anything, I wanted to go home and lie down in my bed and pull the covers over my head. Forget about zombies and guns. But still, when I pulled my hands away from my face, I still saw the same four tired people. Nick placed a hand on my shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. I smiled at him, grateful.

"Hey Ellis, Casey," Rochelle said suddenly, breaking the silence, a small smile on her face. Ellis turned to her, holding his rifle away from him with a perplexed look on his face. "I hear there's a stock car museum in New Orleans," she grinned.

Ellis' eyes widened like she knew they would. "Get outta here!" he shot back, green eyes full of wonder and excitement. "Al _right!_ We gotta get to New Orleans as fast as we can! Right, Casey?"

I shrugged and turned my attention back out the door.

Rochelle smiled back to him before turning to Coach. "Coach, we make it to New Orleans… there's a _cheeseburger_ museum!"

I raised an eyebrow at that and glanced around, but Nick was the only one who was a little bit weirded out about this. A cheeseburger museum?

Coach got a _real_ dreamy look on his face, and I could tell he was thinking about a double decker from Burger Tank or something delicious like that. "Oh… in my heart, I'm there already," he whispered, his eyes slipping shut in delight.

Again, I snuck a glance at Nick and couldn't help but laugh when he returned the exact same look I was giving him.

"Hey, Nick! There's a—!" Rochelle started, looking to him.

"Yeah, no, I'm good, I'm good," Nick assured, smirking at me. I burst into a fit of laughter once again, making Nick start laughing too.

We were interrupted by Ellis all of a sudden. "Okay, okay," he demanded, voice strong, "we gotta hurry now. I miss the car." He stared at Nick and me, hand on the metal bar that was blocking the door.

Nick rolled his eyes and let out a very audible huff. "I can't believe we're walking _this_ far just to keep a damn car," he hissed, and I nudged his leg with my foot.

"We're goin' to find my old man too, Nicholas," I reminded.

It wasn't any use, though. Nick and Ellis had already managed to get into an argument. "Nick, for the last time, I ain't leavin' it behind!" Ellis snapped, glaring at Nick with more fury than I've seen him in since this whole mess started.

"Look, I don't have a problem leaving the car, and _you_ , behind. Okay, Ellis?" Nick growled back, his hands gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white.

It only helped to piss Ellis off even more. "Yeah?" he asked. "Well, maybe if we find a nice open stretch, we slow down a little bit… you can jog right alongside," he threatened, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Like in that boxing movie!" He added, the anger momentarily gone and replaced by excitement.

"Would you two cut it out?!" I hissed, irritated with the both of them for acting like two little kids. "In case y'all _forgot_ , we're in the middle of a zombie-infested town! Can we _please_ get _goin'?!_ "

Before anybody could answer me, Coach's authoritative voice boomed through the safe room and interrupted the ongoing argument. "Listen y'all!" he screamed, voice echoing throughout the room and wrapping itself around all of us. "If we don't pull together as a _team_ …" he stopped, sighing, and studied the floor for a moment before looking at Ellis.

"Ellis…" he began, his voice soft, "you _do_ know that eventually we're gonna have to leave that car behind, right?"

Ellis stared at him for a moment, his eyes glassy as if he didn't really understand what Coach was trying to say to him. And then, he chuckled, his voice a little shaky and unstable. "Heh… yeah, that's not gonna happen."

Rochelle crossed her arms, shaking her head. "You know, I just don't think that the military is gonna airlift the car to safety," she pointed out.

There was another moment of silence as Ellis studied her. "Ro," he mumbled, "that car… it's family now. Hell, biker fella's an awesome dude, man, but we ain't trading him for Nick."

I froze a little at that, my eyes flickering to Ellis. Yeah, Nick wasn't exactly the most pleasant guy to have around when you needed cheering up, but it stung. I didn't like him talking about trading in strangers for the people we'd already been going through this bullshit with.

"Of _course_ not," I spat at him, gaining his attention instantly, "we don't even _know_ him. We can't just let strangers in just like that."

Ellis opened his mouth as if he were about to say something but then shut it, settling instead for staring at me in disbelief. As if he had expected me to _back him up_ on it.

There were a couple seconds of tension before Rochelle jumped in, her voice light and polite. "Oh, actually… does anyone wanna put that to a vote?" she offered, shooting a devious smile at Nick to let him know she was joking.

Either he didn't catch up or he didn't like it. He glared at her instead. "Go to Hell."

"Come _on_ now, _seriously!_ " Coach interjected, sounding even angrier than he had earlier. All of us looked at him and he shot back an irritated, serious glare in return.

I sighed and looked out the door, displeased with myself for getting on Coach's nerves. He had the same type of aura that you'd get from a favorite teacher. You didn't want to upset or annoy him; he was too good of a person to just irritate for the hell of it.

"Y'know, Ellis, you could probably stay here with them and guide them to New Orleans. I'm sure that girl would appreciate it," Nick suggested, keeping his voice friendly so that Coach wouldn't yell at him for arguing. By the look on his face, I could tell he was just tryin' to find a way to get rid of Ellis so that he wouldn't have to deal with him no more. I could feel my heart clench as I waited for Ellis to answer. Surely he'd want to stay here if it meant being with that girl he liked so much.

Ellis stared at Nick blankly as if he didn't understand what Nick was saying. It only worried me further. Maybe… maybe he was really considering it…

"Oh man, my heart is torn," Ellis replied, glancing at me and looking away when he saw me lookin' back at him, "...but I think I gotta go with the car."

I couldn't help but to smile and instead hit it behind my knee as I finished messing about with my bandages. Nick scoffed, rolling his eyes and muttering a quick 'whatever', earning a glare from Ellis.

Silence fell over us again. Ellis made his way over to me, setting his rifle down on the floor and leaning it against the table before bending a little so that he could rest his head on my shoulder, glaring at Nick. I eyed him a little, surprised, but I didn't push him off. I decided to accept that I could try and convince myself all I wanted, but the fact was that I had a crush on this boy that I'd only known a few days. I placed a hand on his back.

"If anyone sees some hand sanitizer, let me know," Nick muttered.

That struck out the tension once again. We all grinned at Nick, and I could tell that he was in for a session of mocking.

"Oh, come on, man… you ain't afraid of a little dirt, are you?" Coach challenged. I snickered as he asked, as did Ellis and Rochelle.

Nick wasn't nearly as amused. "A germ just wiped out the whole planet, Coach, so yes." He sniffed and scowled in some other direction.

But Coach just kept poking fun at him. "You got a real thing about germs, don't you?"

"Nick, catching a cold isn't high up on my list of concerns right now," Rochelle added, her voice a little dry.

"Yah, ha, ha, ha. A little bit more hand sanitizer and we wouldn't be in this mess," Nick replied, desperate to defend his belief. He looked at my with gray eyes—same as mine—that commanded me to side with him. I opened my mouth, about to. It was a fair point, all this about germs.

But before I could say anything Rochelle continued, and by the sound of it Nick was _really_ starting to set her off. "You want us to cover your back while you wash your hands, Nick?" she sneered.

"STOP!"

I jumped at the impact of Coach's voice, and Ellis' head snapped up off my shoulder and suddenly his arms were around me, pulling me securely into his chest. Nick and Rochelle had jumped as well. Nick's back straightened up against the wall. I pulled away from Ellis.

"I am getting _pissed off!_ " Coach barked at us, slamming his fist down on the desk he sat on. I did my best to regain my breath, noting Nick and Rochelle shoot each other an annoyed, childish glare. I half expected them to stick their tongues out at each other.

So there we were, Nick and Rochelle glaring at each other, Coach glaring at both of them. I glanced at Ellis and he shrugged, before looking to Coach innocently. "You reckon we should move out now?" he inquired softly, his voice even.

"Yeah," Coach replied, grabbing his shotgun and holding it at the ready. I pushed off the table and held my rifle securely, feeling as my heartbeat began increasing. This was it. Time to find dad. Behind me, Nick and Rochelle readied their weapons as well.

Ellis tore the bar off the door and we filed out, taking down a few stray zombies with our weapons that weren't firearms. Realizing I'd be a lot better off with it, I swapped my katana in for my rifle and allowed the gun to rest on my back.

The street was littered with zombies. Decayed faces that I recognized from the nights when I was still in high school and would spend my weeknights sitting at the counter of my daddy's bar sippin' on a soda, doing homework while the regulars told me stories about their wives and the war and their time being cops. All of daddy's regulars had been cops at one point. But now they no longer served to keep the public safe. Nah, now they just ate the public.

They didn't seem interested in us. It wasn't until we noted the sloshing sounds as they pulled out the intestines of some unfortunate person to pass before us that we realized why. I took a deep breath, disgusted.

Up the alley was a lone zombie that hadn't yet noticed the corpse, a bandana tied around his head and a Midnight Riders shirt on his chest. He didn't look that old, I realized with a chill. Ellis peered through the scope of his sniper rifle and blew its head off in a single show before laughing, pleased with himself.

The moment was cut short by violent thundering up above our heads. The storm was getting angrier and angrier by the second, and it would only be a matter of minutes before it would start to pour and we would be drenched.

"Is it rainin'?" Ellis asked, looking up the sky just as the downpour I'd been talking about started up. "Nevermind," he sighed, "it is."

We all let out sighs—save for Nick who was cussin' up a storm of his own about how his poor white suit was done for—and kept on walking. I popped the collar of my jacket in an effort to try and keep warm a little bit longer.

We kept on down the road, taking down the wandering zombies ahead of us with our paddles and swords and bats and such. No use in wastin' bullets on simple zombies that could be taken out with something lighter and not as noisy.

I shuddered as I heard a faint growling and stopped, stumbling a little when Rochelle walked into me. She said nothing, though, instead looking around for the source as well. Footsteps could be heard running away from us, so we just kept on walkin'.

A tattoo parlor I'd first seen the inside of when I was six years old and then returned to twelve years later for my birthday present lay ahead of us, its lights still on. Drawn to it as it promised shelter from the rain, we filed into it.

"Tattoos!" Ellis cheered happily once we were all inside and the door was shut, barring any rain from entering. We explored the small room, the others looking at the tattoo designs on the walls.

I smiled as I saw the design I had on my left hip up on the wall. Nothin' special, just a pair of lips that I thought looked sexy on me when I was eighteen. But the smile wiped right off my face when I saw a dead girl in one of the tattoo chairs, her body curled up into a ball as if she had died crying.

"I've never done a colored tattoo," Nick admitted, looking up at the wall.

Everyone seemed pretty amused at seeing all those tattoo designs. "I got that one," Coach said, pointing to a design of a pair of dice, "that one…" he stopped, chuckling. "Hell, I got most of these!"

Coach had tattoos? Nick, Rochelle, Ellis, and I all exchanged a look. "Where?" Rochelle asked.

But Coach only laughed. "Hey…" he said softly, "Coach keeps his secrets."

Cue a disgusted noise from all four of us. "Please be the ankle, _please_ be the ankle…" Rochelle muttered under her breath.

Stepping away from the girl, I walked to my tattoo on the wall and pointed to it. "This one is mine," I announced, a small smile on my face as I pulled my shirt up enough to show said tattoo on my hip. "Got it on my eighteenth birthday. My daddy said it was silly, but all my friends thought it was _so_ cool."

Ellis strolled over to me, leaning down and eyeing the tattoo closely, making me blush a little bit. Then he looked up to the one on the wall and nodded before smiling at me. He straightened up a bit. "That's real nice, Casey," he smiled.

"Man, I love tattoos," he mused, setting a hand on the wall. "I only have one," he explained, gesturing to his right arm with the tribal-lookin' tattoo on his bicep, "but I was gonna get my _truck_ tattooed on my other arm. Damn zombies…"

I glanced at his clean arm and laughed a little, shaking my head. A truck tattoo would've looked real odd, but it would've suited him real nicely. Hell, if he'd managed to get it done, he'd probably have been talkin' all about it right then.

From across me, Nick raised an eyebrow and smirked at Ellis. "Ellis, did you get that girl's name?" he asked. "'Cause I can tattoo it on your ass. She'll like that," he offered innocently as if it were true.

I narrowed my eyes at him before rolling them the second I saw Ellis lookin' as if he were actually considering it. I wrapped my arms around my drenched self and sauntered away from him, annoyed, leavin' him to look confused and dumb by his lonesome.

"Oh no," Rochelle sighed bringing her hand up to her forehead and shaking her head. I sat on the table beside her, exchanging a look with her. Men were so… ugh.

But Nick was relentless. "Rochelle, do you want me to tattoo your boyfriend's name on your arm?"

" _What?_ "

" _C'mon_ , I saw the way you were lookin' at him!" Nick pushed on, cackling as if he was having the time of his life.

Maybe he wasn't expecting Rochelle to be a little bit smoother. "Hm, sorry, I didn't get his name," she replied, her voice even as she sunk into one hip, unimpressed.

Nick shrugged, though, unaffected. "I'll just write 'greasy pig'," he reasoned, "we all know who we're talking about," he added with a laugh.

I stared at him, wondering what had crawled up his ass. Maybe he was still peeved from earlier in the safe room. "Compared to you, Nick, he was downright nice," Rochelle snapped.

"Sounds like you're a little jealous, Nicky, darlin'," I added, a smirk on my face as I raised an eyebrow just a little bit at him. It earned me a sour 'go to Hell', but I'd be lyin' if I said it wasn't worth it.

In the meantime, Ellis had since headed off to eye the written tattoos. Stuff like 'mom' and 'love'. He turned to Nick, a determined look on his face. "Hey Nick," he called out, "you and me? We ought to get tattoos that say 'bros'."

Coach and Rochelle laughed at that, and I laughed a little bit, too, even though it meant having Nick get even more cross with me. "That's never gonna happen, Ellis," Nick replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm gonna get a tattoo that says 'no'."

That made us all laugh a good amount, save for Ellis who looked honest to goodness upset about it. A 'no' tattoo would suit Nick just fine.

The laughter helped push Ellis' grief aside, though, and he was smilin' his sweet smile again in no time. "This one time, my buddy Keith—on a dare—got a tattoo. 'I'M A MORON'," he explained, laughing to himself as we started headin' out of the parlor. "Right across his forehead, man. 'Course, he made two hundred bucks off that, so, you ask yourself—who's the _real_ moron, huh?"

"Uh huh," Rochelle replied, sounding bored with him. I didn't stick up for him. Every time I had a nice moment going with him, he'd ruin it by bringing up that girl again. Besides, the rain was just makin' my mood droop a little bit more.

We kept on headin' down the road I knew would take us, eventually, to my daddy's bar. We climbed up into a window leadin' to the local pool hall, a jukebox glowin' in the darkness. As everyone took a moment to breathe and snack on an unopened bag of pretzels someone had left on one of the pool tables, I did a quick count and realized Nick wasn't with us.

"Hey Coach, can coaches marry people?" Ellis wondered aloud as I looked around and noticed Rochelle lookin' round too. Coach, in the meantime, inspected a fresh bat on the floor not far from where we'd found the pretzels.

"No, Ellis," he growled as Rochelle and I looked to each other. Nick must've still been hanging back at the parlor.

"Hunte—GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF!"

We sprang into action at that. Rochelle burst through a nearby door off to the side and I heard gunfire, and as I ran after her I saw Nick get pounced by a hunter. I trained my rifle on it and aimed to shoot at it with her, but she nailed it with a skillful headshot and before long, it'd went limp. Nick pushed it to the side and stood, clearly shaken up.

"I owe you one," he muttered to Rochelle as Coach and Ellis joined us in the alleyway, their shocked faces trained on the dead hunter.

We re-entered the pool hall and Ellis made a beeline to the jukebox, pushing the buttons on it in a hurry and smiling when music filled the room. "Alright, the jukebox works!" he cheered.

He switched the songs until the Midnight Riders' _One Bad Man_ came on. "This jukebox's alright," Coach smiled, before turning to Nick and tossing a first aid kit at him. "You okay?"

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Nick replied, unzipping the pack and starting to bandage himself, more annoyed than hurt really. At that, the jukebox let out a deafening scratch and died.

We stood in silence for a couple of beats. "HOGWASH!" Ellis cursed, kicking the jukebox with all his might, and then slumping against the wall beside it, a seriously pained expression on the half of his face that his hat's visor wasn't covering. Somethin' told me he wasn't upset 'cause of the jukebox.

"Damn, Ellis!" Coach shouted, as disproportionately angry as Ellis was sad. I froze a little. This was a lot of emotion over one damn jukebox. Though, I guess it made a little bit of sense. None of us had really had a good cry or nothin' about this situation save for myself earlier in the night after seein' my dead neighbors. These guys didn't have any dead neighbors to metaphorically slap them in the face and make 'em come to facts with the situation at hand.

"Hey, I didn't touch _nothin'!_ " Ellis shouted back, glaring at Coach and then looking back to the ground again. Feeling like I owed him for the times he had comforted me, I made my way to him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, giving him a light hug.

He brought his head up a little and gave me a sad smile before sighing. He set his forehead against mine, his green eyes meeting my gray ones.

It was too close, too intimate, and it made me a little sad. I placed a gentle kiss on his cheek and backed away from him as if he were burning up and looked through the window. "Let's get you back to that girl you wanna marry," I mumbled, unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I didn't look to see what his expression was.

"Can we get going?" Rochelle asked cautiously, glancing at him.

"Sure," Ellis agreed, looking at her from over my shoulder. I backed away even more, holding up my rifle. "Into the construction site," Ellis suggested, pointing out the window. He glanced at me as if checking if that was the right way, and I nodded, not wanting to speak. We were a stone's throw from the bar at this point.

We climbed out from the open window and slipped down into dirty water. This was the road I had mentioned to Nick when we first got to the bridge, the one that they'd torn apart to fix up. Funny how they destroyed so that they could make it good again.

Just as Ellis jumped down into the water we heard a monstrous scream, one that made me whimper in fear despite myself. I recoiled into Ellis' side, gripping his arm as if it were a safety blanket. No time for thinkin' about keepin' my wits about me right then. I was too scared to worry about that.

"Shit!" Nick hissed.

"Just keep going," Coach insisted, and we walked a little faster, our feet sloshing around in the dirty, murky water. I winced as something slimy touched my bare leg and yanked it away, disgusted. I wished I'd worn rain boots.

We climbed out of the dirty water and back onto the street, and my breath hitched as I saw that glowing neon sign right in front of us. Red Flight bar. This was it.

"H-Here," I muttered and began walking to it, not controlling my legs as I did. It was so close.

Behind us, the sound of a bus horn shot by, and we all momentarily turned to look. I saw a flash of orange and the word 'Riders'.

"You guys see that?!" Nick asked, surprised.

"Was that a bus?" Rochelle mumbled just as Ellis wondered to himself if he was seeing things.

"I think I just saw…" Coach began, pointing to where we had seen the bus shoot by. But he stopped and shook his head. "Naw… I must be dreamin'."

Momentary distraction gone, I raced down the steps and didn't fall down them by some miracle, and started trying to open the door. It resisted a little, but with the help of the others we got it to give and we all spilled inside.

A single zombie shot right at us when we walked in, and on reflex, I shot it straight through the head before my eyes began exploring the bar that I had come to know as a second home laying before me. It was a mess. The shelves where my daddy kept all the liquors was smashed and empty—surely looted by drunks passing by. Even the one that had a lock on it, where he kept the aged wines and expensive stuff, shattered. People had no respect no more.

The bar stools were tossed around as if a tornado had swept in and played fifty-two pick-up with them. One sat on one of the tables off to the right. In the upper righthand corner, the TV my daddy would show any football or basketball or hockey games on was smashed. By the looks of it, it had been smashed by said bar stool.

The others were talkin' but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Taking short steps over to the zombie I leaned over it, my heart clenched. Relief swam through me once the realization that it wasn't my father—or anyone else I recognized, for that matter—dawned on me. My brain clicked and realized he must have been one of the survivors CEDA had picked up when they came by Rayford. I hadn't even noticed that we'd been walking past CEDA vans and trailers this whole time.

So, if this dead zombie wasn't my dad, where the hell was he?

I headed into the back room where my daddy kept a pool table that I'd once won $50 from while playing a game with a few of my dad's old officer friends. It was a simple game of billiards and they had let me win, but it had still been a triumphant victory. All over the walls of this room, people had written things—messages. Phone numbers to call women named Theresa and Kasie, both of whom were now apparently dead. Jokes about pooping in the current crisis that otherwise might've made me laugh. Some guy named Crazy Dave selling weapons.

I felt my knees buckle when I found one in blue paint, written in handwriting that had been spelling out my school notes since Kindergarten.

 _Casey,_

 _Rayford is NOT SAFE. CEDA came thru and everythin is gettin bad. Gone to New Orleans with Neil + Jim. Listen to your father, STAY SAF_

He hadn't finished writing out the word 'safe'. Right beside it was a splash of paint as if he'd knocked the bucket over while writing. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, but there was a big enough stain of blood on the wall beside it that had dripped down onto the floor.

He had met with CEDA. He'd gotten out. He'd been killed. Writing a message. He was in New Orleans with Neil and Jim. Friends from the police force. He was alive. He was dead.

I could feel my head spinning. The message answered no questions. All it told me was that he knew I'd be stubborn enough to come lookin' for him here in Rayford.

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and was brought back to reality. Pushing it away absently, I assured whoever its owner was that I was just fine, and stood up. When I looked to them, the four of them were lookin' at me as if I were seconds from a mental breakdown. I swallowed it down and held my gun to my chest.

"Let's keep goin'."


	13. Chapter 13

I kept on without waiting for an answer, my heartbeat pounding loud as anything in my ears. There was only one thing left for me to do now, and that thing was to head to the great state of New Orleans. Rayford held nothing for me anymore. The others followed silently.

"Hey, let's search these rooms here," Ellis suggested as we climbed up the set of stairs by the pool table room of the bar, stairs that lead to a couple bedrooms people rented. When I was younger, I was always askin' my dad why we didn't live up there, too. I thought it'd be a _hell_ of a lot more convenient than livin' in a house a couple ways away from the downtown. Now, I was glad we didn't live there. It wouldn't have been nice to see my home destroyed and overrun, too.

Nick kicked down the door to the first room we walked past and smiled as soon as he caught wind of what was inside. I peeked in over his shoulder and saw on that on the floor, laying open and full of money, was a suitcase. Nick made his way to it and pulled out some cash, quickly shoving it into his suit pocket, along with a spare pistol. "Don't mind if I do," he said with a smile.

"A suitcase full of pistols and money…" Coach sang quietly under his breath. Midnight Riders.

"Is this your suitcase, Nick?" Rochelle quizzed from the doorway, and honestly, it made enough sense to me. If Nick wasn't the type of man to pack an, ahem, suitcase full of pistols and money, I didn't know who was. Except maybe the Midnight Riders, of course.

But Nick only smiled back and turned to the case. "I like the way this guy packs."

"What's the use in stealin' this guy's money if we're in a zombie apocalypse?" Ellis challenged, something that I probably would've asked, too, had I not been so shaken up from the bar. My eyes switched from Ellis to Nick, as Nick just glared back his reply. Ellis let out a heavy, wistful sigh.

"Oh, I keep hoping we drive to a place where there aren't any more zombies," he mumbled, glancing at Rochelle with sad eyes.

She let out a dry laugh. "Oh, I just keep hoping I _wake up_ every day," she replied solemnly. It was a fair point, and I couldn't agree more.

By the sound of Coach's voice, he'd exited out onto the balcony. "Come on, this way," he urged, and we followed him out to it. He stood, facing a wooden plank that connected us to the neighboring building. "Over this plank," he instructed.

We all stared at it, apprehensive. It looked wobbly, and the rain had drenched it all the way through. I wasn't sure if it could support our weight. "Looks real safe," Nick said sarcastically, voicing mine and probably everybody's concerns. "Ellis, you go first."

He strengthened his own suggestion by giving Ellis a slight shove towards the plank, making Ellis stumble just a little bit. I found myself reaching out and grabbing his arm before he could go too far or fall. Embarrassed, I retracted my hand and looked down instead.

Ellis let out a scared sigh, surprised from the push, before scowling at Nick. "Hey!" he growled, annoyed.

In the meantime, Coach snapped his gaze up from looking down onto the street below us. "Oh, shit," he whispered, and shuddered. "Do _not_ look down!" he announced, and with a deep breath began walking carefully across the plank.

I didn't want him to go. I was scared of him falling, and then it'd only be the four of us, and then who _knows_ what would happen to us without Coach there to guide us. But he crept on, and before long he'd reached the other side. It was enough for him to deem the plank safe, give it the Coach stamp of approval, and he gave us all a determined look as if saying it was our turns.

Not wanting to be left behind, I took a careful step onto the plank, concentrating all my energy and focus onto my foot to make sure it didn't go slipping nowhere. It remained still, and I continued on, walking carefully. I almost jumped when I felt two hands on my hips, but relaxed a little bit when Ellis let me know it was only him, not some flesh-hungry zombie. I could feel the others behind him, not far, probably gripping on to him and each other as well to help all of us keep balance.

"Bad time for a smoker," I heard Ellis mutter in my ear, and I shuddered out of fear. I wouldn't mind if he kept thoughts like that to hisself, at least while we were thirty feet up in the air with no net and only cold, wet, uninviting brick pathways below us.

"I am not looking down…" I heard Rochelle mumble to herself.

What felt like an eternity and a half later, we made it through the window of the next building over where Coach was waiting. I almost fell into it, my legs limp and weak from the walk. It was utterly exhausting being so terrified. Behind me, Ellis slumped in as well, followed by Nick.

Rochelle was just about to enter when a roar came from far below her, and her gaze snapped to its source. "TANK!" she screeched, making Coach reach out and seize her wrist to pull her inside to (relative) safety. Just in time, too. The damn thing had thought nothing better than to fling a dumpster at her. It soared by, moments after Coach had managed to pull her inside.

"Watch out!" Nick screamed, pulling his arm through the window and shooting at the tank with his pistols. Ellis turned out as well, and trained the scope of his rifle on it, shooting like there was no tomorrow.

"Keep shootin', keep shootin'!" he screamed, the terror in his voice clear as day.

"Gotta reload!" Nick announced, and I took his spot and started shooting at the tank with my own hunting rifle. Rochelle took a spot by the next window and started shooting at the monster-zombie, too, as Nick rejoined the shooting fest at the window she stood at with her.

It wasn't exactly brainless, I suppose. The tank caught on quickly and started climbing up the damn balconies of the building we'd just left, some of them tumbling down under his weight, and managed to reach the plank. "RUN!" Ellis screamed, and before I could make any logical decisions myself he'd grabbed my arm and yanked me behind him, his grip iron and unbreakable. Rochelle and Nick's footsteps rushed behind us as we heard something snap in half. The plank.

We passed through a wide, open room that seemed to have been under construction when the world up and canceled its regularly scheduled programming. Coach waited by a large opening in the brick wall furthest from us, one that led out to stairs that Ellis pulled me through and down.

"Move your damn ass!" Coach commanded as we rushed past, and I found myself tripping down the steps like a drunk, the only thing in focus being Ellis' back as he ran in front of me. He noticed this predicament and swiftly grabbed me and carried me as we heard an explosion in the room we'd just left, followed by a new pair of footsteps on the stairs behind us.

I barely noticed where we exited to. We were out quick, back into the rain and the streets. Ellis set me down by some hedges, pulling his rifle from his back. "Now you stay behind me!" he screamed at me, more serious and angry than I'd ever seen him. Intimidated, I nodded and pulled my own gun out as Coach ran through the door. All of us trained our guns towards it.

"Get ready!" Ellis warned.

But nothing came out of the door. Instead, behind us, near Rochelle, a window shattered. A colossal, flaming form fell from it, and Rochelle screamed in surprise. "Oh shit!" she managed to squeak as it raised its heavy fist and punched her clean through the air, far enough that she smashed into a car.

"Back up!" Ellis screamed to me before running to the tank and shooting straight at it. It'd been a mistake. The tank turned its attention to Ellis in a second and shot after him, walking on its big, ugly fists. "Hey, keep shooting, keep shooti—!" Ellis screamed but was interrupted by another of the tank's devastating punches.

" _Ellis!_ " I screeched, and ran after the tank, not even bothering with the hunting rifle's scope and instead just shooting at it, allowing each bullet to hit its back with hatred. Rochelle, Nick, and Coach joined me.

The tank was just about worn out from all the bullets, that and the fire that Coach had lit onto it. It stood for a moment, immobile, before wobbling a little and falling over, dead. The ground shook as it did, and the rain managed to put out the fire pretty fast now that it wasn't running around.

Ellis made his way back to us and I threw my arms around him, grateful he was still even alive. I could feel myself slipping into some sort of belated hysteria. I didn't care. I decided then that he could talk about marrying that girl all he wanted, I didn't care about that either. He was safe.

"Alright now, you done good!" Coach congratulated us, breathing heavy but still smiling through it. I beamed at him over Ellis' shoulder, still hugging him as tightly as I could manage. When he let out a few chuckles and patted my back, I let go, still staying right by his side. I felt like if I strayed too far from him, I'd keep going and never stop, not until I reached New Orleans by myself or got killed trying. Probably the latter.

We only took a second to catch our breath, and then continued on before anything else could ambush us. We kept on until we reached a familiar sight in Rayford, one that anybody who'd had their second grade in town would've recognized. The underground tour.

"Historic Under the River tour," Coach read aloud from the sign, a small grin on his face. "I heard all about this 'under-the-river' tour," he said, excited. "Supposed to be pretty damn good! Real educational."

I opened my mouth, ready to protest. This damn thing sucked. It was smelly, unclean, and full of toilet water. Plus, they hadn't even finished it. Twelve years and they still hadn't even built part two. I didn't know who had decided to go and lie to him by saying it was anything better than gum stuck to your shoe.

But Nick was faster. "Under the _what_ , now?" he demanded, his face contorting into an expression of disgust. Man, he would _not_ be enjoying this tour.

"If we can't go over the river, we can always try under," Rochelle added with a laugh.

Coach seemed pleased that our path was going to lead us through the door. "That'll get us across," he grinned, setting off to walk into the tour. I didn't have the heart to tell him, so I just gripped Ellis' hand and followed along silently, as did the others, save for Rochelle who put a hand on his shoulder. She looked skeptical.

"Coach, you know _anything_ about this under the river tour?" she asked, eyeing the entrance.

He only stared at her blankly, before nodding slowly. "Yeah," he replied, "it goes under the river."

Rochelle rolled her eyes, that clearly wasn't something she hadn't been able to piece together herself. "Glad I asked," she mumbled, annoyed.

"Man, how am I supposed to know?" Coach replied with a hearty laugh. "I ain't been there yet!"

Rochelle nodded, seeing as that statement made enough sense. Nick turned to me, his face real serious. "Casey, you know anything about this thing?"

Well, that was the moment of truth. I glanced at Coach, seeing the excitement dancing in his tired brown eyes, ones that reminded me too much of my old man. "Yeah, I've been here a couple times… it… it'll get us to where we wanna go," I said. It was enough of an answer for Coach, but not quite for Nick. He turned to look at the entrance of the tour, disgusted.

He hesitated as Coach walked on in. "Who, uh… who wants to bet that this is gonna be filthy?" Nick asked, turning a real pretty shade of green. It made Rochelle smile.

"Oh you are gonna _love_ the under the river tour," she giggled, strolling on past him.

"Oh, I am not looking forward to this under the river tour…" Nick muttered under his breath as we headed inside.

Ellis cheered, offering me a high-five. "Jimmy Gibbs Junior, we're comin' for you, baby!" he yelled. Confused, I returned his high-five, laughing a little bit. He was a good distraction from the things ongoing. It was enough for him, he was too happy to get back to the Blue 22. "Let's go under the river!"


	14. Chapter 14

We strolled on past the front desk where a receptionist usually sat at and checked in all the elementary school classes that came by to see this godforsaken tour every year, month after month. "Should we leave some money?" Ellis wondered aloud, though nobody answered him.

"This could be pretty interesting," Coach mused, nodding his head a little in excitement. I mean, sure, if you like seein' floating turds and dirt. I kept my mouth shut, deciding that wasn't the best thing to say.

"Trust me, that won't be the case," Nick hissed back, and I shot a short nod at him. Shoot, at that rate, Nick and I were on a good way to becoming buddies.

The first part of the under-the-river tour was about as damp and dirty as it had always been. Piles of bricks were set against the walls, construction promised and threatened but never started. The walkways were the same creaky wooden planks I'd walked on when I was seven years old. It still reeked like somebody's month-old tuna fish sandwich.

Still, Coach tried his best to keep the cheerfulness alive. "Man!" he said, a big smile on his face. "Look at all this…! Uh…" he stopped, eyes scanning the scene ahead of us. I placed a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't pretend things weren't like they were any longer. "Aw… this tour is bullshit."

Rochelle, Ellis, and I did our best to comfort Coach while Nick snickered. "So… it's an antique basement, then? Fantastic. You're right, Coach, you're so right," he chuckled, a sly smirk on his face as he looked at the filthy room in front of us, "history is coming alive."

I head to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at that remark. I'd heard a lot of jokes about the tour in all my years, but that one just took the cake. "Oh, shut up, Nick," Coach snapped and crept on. We followed after him, careful not to push his buttons any more than Nick already had.

"Don't know why, I was thinkin' there'd be some rides here," Ellis whispered to me. I shrugged in response. That was another broken promise about this tour.

"They said they'd put some in one day, too, but I was nine then and they still ain't in," I whispered back. We walked past one particularly creaky wooden path and made our way around it carefully, minding ourselves as to not alert any zombies.

A few feet behind me, Rochelle let out an audible sigh. "Only in the south would _this_ pass for a museum," she muttered.

"Man…" Coach mumbled as we entered the next room. "This is a real…"

"Shithole?" I volunteered.

"Yeah, it's a shithole," Coach agreed, sighing and hanging his head.

"Sorry, Coach," Rochelle said to him, placing a hand on his back.

Nick rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. "Told ya!" he said, his voice smug.

"Shut up, Nick."

Ellis stopped walking, turning to glare at Nick. "Nick!" he scolded, "we all see the tour's got some problems, no sense in pickin' on Coach!" With that, he looked to me as if he were waiting for my approval. I looked back to Nick and nodded.

He only glared back and studied the walls as if he was gearing up to say something else that was either whiny or cutting, or maybe both. "Why is everything _historic_ always so goddamn filthy?" he demanded, furrowing his eyebrows as if keepin' the tour clean was my responsibility.

Rolling my eyes, I turned back and faced forward only to notice that we were approaching the infamous sign. Ellis leaned closer to it, squinting to read it in the dim light. I could recite the entire thing by heart at this point.

"'Phase one is over'?!" he read.

"Tour is _over?!_ " Coach asked, shocked. I nodded, letting out a long sigh. This damn sign had been up for as long as I could remember, talkin' all about how phase one was over but not complete and how great phase two would be. "Bullshit."

"Jesus Christ, what did we just pay five bucks for?" Nick demanded, and I turned to look at him, my eyes flicking to the bulge in his suit jacket pocket. Had he actually reached in there and left $5 at the counter in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? He glared back at me, and I guess my face gave away my thoughts. "Aw, shut up, Casey."

I snickered and moved on, swapping out my rifle for the katana. "Down the steps," I announced, and we headed off in that direction.

It was even dirtier and darker in the staircase, to Nick's dismay, and I knew if I so much as looked at him I'd burst out laughing. "Hope phase two has rides," Ellis mumbled from behind me as we climbed down the stairs.

"It better," Rochelle seconded.

I wasn't expecting what came next. See, to the folks of Rayford, phase two of the tour was always blocked off and forbidden. I'd always imagined that it was just full of construction and bricks and damn signs and such, we all did, and I figured they would've at least gotten to work a teeny bit on it while I was in New York. I wasn't expecting the stairs to abruptly open to a drop off into dirty, murky sewer water, and I would've fallen in had Ellis not reached out and swooped his arm around my waist, catching me just before I could fall in.

"Thanks," I muttered, eyes wide as I stared into the water.

He grinned back before his eyes flickered back to the water. "Now _this_ is more like it!" he said approvingly, nodding his head.

I couldn't see how this was anything more like 'it' unless 'it' was disgusting and terrible. It was shit water, to be blunt, lined with dead bodies. "A sewer filed with bodies," Nick observed, his voice a touch higher as if he were really losing his mind, "this is sanitary."

As he said that, I could feel my stomach lurching. I didn't wanna go in the water, but I knew there was no other way. "Oh, why is it always _water?_ " Rochelle groaned from beside me.

"Come on now, let's just get through this shit!" Coach commanded, his voice taut and serious as it'd been when we were all pissin' him off in the saferoom earlier in the night.

I looked back up to him and couldn't help myself. "Literally," I said with a chuckle. Coach glared back at me before breaking into a grin, unable to keep from laughing just a little bit at my stupid joke.

"Last one in is a rotten egg!" Ellis cheered, and with that, he tightened his grip around me and jumped straight into the water, bringing me along with him.

We hit the water with a dull thud, him just under me to cushion my fall. I winced in pain and looked to him—it had to have hurt him way more than it did me—but he just grinned and reached his hand out, and I helped him stand. "Anyone but you and I'd drown you this second," I muttered to him. He gave me a swift kiss on the cheek in response, and said nothing else.

Moments later, Rochelle appeared beside us, landing in the water with a considerably larger amount of grace. She looked around, clearly disgusted, before shuddering.

Above our heads, Coach and Nick remained on the stairs still, arguing. Nick obviously did _not_ want to go in the water, it was plain as day to see. "You know how many germs are in that thing?" he asked Coach, soundin' more like a teenage girl.

"Okay, I haven't caught _zombie_. I'm not gonna worry about cooties, Nick," Rochelle sneered, shaking her head as she looked up at him. Ellis and I stared back up at Nick, too, not sayin' much of anything. I figured that when Nick was havin' one of his temper tantrums, it was better to steer clear and not really pick a side.

But Nick wasn't just about ready to give up, and we were losin' precious time. "Hey, man, we should keep going," Ellis suggested quietly, tiptoeing around his words as to not piss off Nick any more than he already was.

"Yeah?" Nick asked, his voice dripping with sarcastic concern. "No."

I watched as Coach turned to glare at him before crazed laughed could be heard echoing from the staircase, then bouncing off all the walls around us. Coach noticed it before any of us could so much as look up, and I knew instantly it was one of those horseback riding zombies again. "Nick, get your O.C.D. smellin' ass _movin'!_ " Coach commanded as he placed one large hand on Nick's shoulder, and shoved him straight into the water.

Nick protested like hell, but Coach didn't give a rat's ass about it. In a second Nick crashed down into the water in front of the three of us already in, going straight in entirely and even with a comical little splash. I braced myself, he was gonna come up swearin' like hell. Still, neither Ellis, Rochelle, nor myself could help ourselves, and we all burst into laughter.

In the meantime, Coach jumped down, eyeing Nick as he came up, his pristine white suit effectively… _browned_.

"Ah, god dammit!" he cussed, and proceeded to go into a rant about everybody and their grandmother. But it was useless, none of us heard any real context over our hysterical laughter. I felt Rochelle grab my arm, holding herself from falling over and ending up like Nick.

He turned, glaring daggers at Coach. "Coach, if you do that again, I will bury you alive," he threatened, holding his fist up.

Honestly, he looked just like a little kid doin' that, and it just sent another wave of chuckles over the four of us. "We straight," Coach agreed, holding up a hand.

Making a face, Nick kneeled down and began searching for his fallen pistol among the sewer water. "Aw, this is some gross shit," he muttered, sounding queasy as he finally found it.

I saw Ellis stiffen, and turned to look at where he was gazing. "Oh man, I found a candy bar!" he cheered, leaning over and reaching for it. I placed a hand on his wrist, though, shaking my head when he looked at me with a puzzled expression. Confused, he eyed it again. "Whoop… false alarm."

Yet again, we all groaned in disgust. "Jesus, Ellis," Coach grunted, visibly trying to keep from gagging. Trying to shrug his disgust off, he started leading us through the sewer.

I walked behind Coach, minding my self from any—ahem— _candy bars_ that might float near my bare legs. Maybe it wasn't a great decision to choose shorts for a zombie apocalypse. From beside me, Nick was havin' a real hard time with all of this. "It's just a storm sewer, it is _just a storm sewer_ ," he repeated to himself, closing his eyes and breathing hard.

Coach glanced back at him, amused. "Nick, my man, face it—we are walking through _shit_."

"Bad advice, _bad advice_ ," Nick replied, a hand flying to his stomach, the other to his mouth. Feeling a little sorry for him, I reached out and rubbed his back gently in an effort to comfort him, just like my dad used to when I was little and had a stomachache. He shot me a look that, for him, was grateful.

Coach wasn't nearly as sympathetic. "Don't trip, Nick," he added, looking forward and laughing.

I chuckled a little as Nick began walkin' real careful, taking Coach's joke as solid advice. "Hey, Nick…" Rochelle whispered from the other side of him. "Splash fight?"

" _Don't you dare_ ," Nick hissed.

She laughed, as did Ellis, Coach, and I. Sure, I sympathized with him plenty and all, but he was actin' like a baby. "Let's find ourselves a ladder!" Coach instructed. He flipped on his flashlight as the light coming from the staircase became fainter and fainter.

I shivered in the cold of the sewer, jumping a little when Ellis' arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me up against his warm self. I shot him a small smile.

"I am breathing shit air into my lungs. It is being absorbed into my bloodsteam… I am _literally_ full of shit."

I gotta admit, I didn't do too good of a job at keepin' in my laughter at that little comment of his. I lost it, turning back to grin at Nick and receiving a smug look back as if he were pleased with himself for making a joke that at least one of us found hysterical. The others laughed a little bit, too, though I wasn't sure if it was at Nick's comment or if it was at my laughter. Maybe a little bit of both.

"Ladder on that wall!" Ellis announced, pointing off straight ahead of us towards a dim, yellow glow. We made our way to it, and Coach climbed up first just to make sure all was safe. He nodded, signaling the rest of us to climb up, and we did.

There was a real large metal walkway the construction crew workin' on the tour must've been using, and we walked along it as we headed to wherever it was Coach was leading us.

"I don't know, this is pretty romantic, don'tcha think?" Ellis muttered in my ear, grinning as I shot him a confused and somewhat shy smile, wrapping his arm around my waist.

We walked until we reached a metal gate painted orange-yellow, with a caution sign draped over it and forgotten. "This looks like the only way," Coach mumbled, and we all drew our weapons out real slowly.

"I got a bad feeling about this," Ellis whispered.

We stood, tense, glarin' down the button beside the gate. "Get ready to _go_ once we hit this button," Rochelle warned, nodding at each of us. She pressed it, triggering an alarm, and we climbed back down into the lake of sewer water.

"God _dammit_ , back in the shit water!" Nick cussed as we did, the blaring of the alarm drowning out all noises and splashes. Before anybody could answer, we all froze and glanced back to the gate where an alarm light that we hadn't noticed had sprung to life and was flashing red and white as if it owned the place.

The screech from further down the sewer made us all freeze. "Aw, shit!" Ellis screamed as a group of zombies appeared on the horizon, rushing toward us, cueing our gunfire into the crowd.

"Here comes some puke!" Ellis called, and tore off a jar of vomit that he'd collected earlier in town from his belt, launching it into the zombie group. It called their attention instantly and they began fighting amongst each other in the confusion, allowing our bullets to take them all down easily in just a matter of mere seconds.

"Keep running! That alarm ain't goin' off!" Coach instructed all of us, and we bolted through the dirty water, hugging our guns to our chests. I moved as fast as I could to keep up with everyone, desperate not to get lost on my own in the darkness.

The water made it difficult to move quickly, despite us doing the best we could. " _This_ was going to be the goddamn tour?!" Nick complained as we sprinted, panting heavily in between each word.

"Hope that girl is still waiting for us," Rochelle muttered, ignoring Nick's bellyaching.

"They gotta be, right? I mean, they wouldn't just send us on our way and then go off?" I mumbled back, but none of them answered. I reckon they must've been a little apprehensive themselves.

"Everyone! Up there!" Coach shouted all of a sudden, interrupting the momentary melancholy and shining his flashlight on a ladder that waited maybe twenty or so feet from us. We stepped it up in the speed department, wildly tryin' to make it the ladder before another round of zombies came at us… or worse.

My hand shot out for Ellis' in the darkness and found it, intertwining my fingers with his as tightly as I could and runnin' so that there was only about a foot between us. With a heavy slam, the five of us reached the ladder and started scramblin' to get up it, helping and shoving each other up to get to the top of it.

There was yet another gate waiting for us. "Aw, damn, another one of these things?!" Coach groaned, eyein' a button beside the gate identical to the last one we saw.

Ellis snickered as Coach said that, looking to Nick. "Time for your bath, Nick," he invited.

"I hate you, Ellis!" Nick shot back, casting a real mean glare at Ellis.

But he only shrugged. "Well, I still like you, Nick."

In the meantime, Coach had decided that he was good and ready, goddammit, and pushed the button next to the gate. It swung open with a real loud creak, and he burst through it. "Come on, people! Don't stand around—let's _go!_ "

We ran behind him, and I personally felt much lighter runnin' along the walkway rather than the water. Of course we weren't that fortunate, though; soon enough we saw a drop off that would plant us right back into the sewer lake. "Ooh, yay, back in the water!" Rochelle remarked sarcastically.

Landing in it with a sickening splash, the five of us carried on down our way through a tunnel. "UGH! Jimmy _GODDAMN_ Gibbs!" Nick cussed over the alarm, furious. His complainin' was startin' to get to all of us, I think.

"Nick, if I give you a piggyback ride, will you shut up about the sewer?" Coach challenged, but Nick didn't get to accept like I knew he would. Instead, an animalistic howl cut off all our conversation. It was another horde of zombies, charging at us with empty, glowing mustard-yellow eyes.

We didn't think. We just aimed and shot, the flashlight stuck on Coach's gun reflecting off their eyes in a ghostly way.

"Reloading!" Rochelle shouted, and mere seconds after she said that somethin' pounced on her, laughing hysterically and reminding me of one of them loony patients. She started walkin' off backwards, retreating back in the direction from which we'd come. "Help! Get this thing _off me!_ "

"Rochelle!" Ellis shouted, spinnin' on his heel and heading on after her, pulling out his crowbar and swinging wildly at the zombie riding her as if it were a piñata. "I'm comin', I'm comin'!" he assured, and I heard a squishy smack that made it seem as though he'd managed to hit it off of her.

Coach, Nick, and myself had gotten distracted watching all this nonsense go down, so I was real pleased with my reaction of drawing out the katana and slicin' the head right off a zombie who'd run up behind me, jarblin' and screaming. Alright, maybe a little bit disgusted, too.

"Come on people, let's get with it!" Coach reminded, running off and leading us all ahead again. Ellis and Rochelle caught up in no time.

The tunnel didn't go on for much longer than that and we found ourselves at the other end shortly after, an area that was much better lit than the earlier ones. "Up that ladder!" Coach yelled, shining his flashlight on a bright yellow ladder stuck to the wall parallel to us.

"Le'ts get outta the water," Nick agreed, sounding relieved.

We shot up that ladder as if our lives depended on it (which they did) and towards that promised red door, all of us more than happy to be outta that smelly, filthy water. "Saferoom," Rochelle mumbled, sounding overjoyed.

"Man, that bridge has _got_ to be close," Coach muttered, breathing heavy.

"It is," I assured them, smiling vaguely.

We entered the saferoom and Ellis shut it with all of his strength, glaring out the bars as if pissed with the tunnel for all the crap it put us through. "Shit, that shit was crazy!" Coach exclaimed.

Understatement of the year.


End file.
